{"id":746630,"date":"2026-08-22T23:34:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T23:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/746630\/"},"modified":"2026-08-22T23:34:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T23:34:11","slug":"former-world-champion-admits-he-shouldnt-have-fought-shakur-stevenson-when-he-did","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/746630\/","title":{"rendered":"Former world champion admits he shouldn’t have fought Shakur Stevenson when he did"},"content":{"rendered":"

A former world champion has reflected on the timing of his showdown with Shakur Stevenson<\/a>, believing that he should have fought the slick southpaw in 2023.<\/p>\n

Stevenson is widely regarded as one of the top pound-for-pound fighters in the world, and that was evident back in January when he defeated Teofimo Lopez<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Back then, \u2018The Takeover\u2019 was coming off arguably a career-best performance against Josh Taylor, who he dethroned with a unanimous decision victory for the WBO super-lightweight title.<\/p>\n

Lopez then made two lacklustre defences against Jamaine Ortiz and Steve Claggett, before producing a far more dynamic display while unanimously outpointing Arnold Barboza Jr.<\/p>\n

Based on that, many expected the American to at least win a few rounds against Stevenson, who ultimately dominated their 12-round encounter in January.<\/p>\n

Since then, the two-weight world champion has criticised his father and trainer, Lopez Sr<\/a>, who was berated for his bizarre corner work earlier this year.<\/p>\n

But while he was unhappy with the tactics, Lopez has also told Ariel Helwani<\/a> that he would have stood a better chance at defeating Stevenson two years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d say what went wrong [was] the gameplan. [Stevenson\u2019s] a class act \u2013 a defensive fighter, at that \u2013 and I think the whole [problem] was the miscommunication, and possibly just taking a fight with Shakur at [that] particular time.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe earlier on \u2013 after the Taylor [victory] and those types of fights \u2013 would have been best.\u201d<\/p>\n

While disappointed with his last result, Lopez must now focus on becoming a three-weight world champion against Rolando Romero<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The pair will square off at Las Vegas\u2019 T-Mobile Arena this evening, with \u2018Rolly\u2019 making a first defence of his WBA title.<\/p>\n

He claimed the WBA \u2018regular\u2019 strap in May 2025, dropping and unanimously outpointing Ryan Garcia<\/a>, and has since been upgraded to full welterweight champion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former world champion has reflected on the timing of his showdown with Shakur Stevenson, believing that he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":729667,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-746630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=746630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/729667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=746630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=746630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=746630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}