O’Shaquie Foster has a three-belt unification in nine days. His mind is on Emanuel Navarrete — but he still had time to say the quiet part out loud about Shakur Stevenson.
In a new Fight Hub TV interview, Foster said he believes Shakur is terrified of fighting him, and that Shakur’s real hope is that somebody else beats Foster first so the fight never has to happen. Per Foster, Stevenson had indicated a win over Raymond Ford would earn him his shot. Foster went and beat Ford in May. Then the talks went quiet, Stevenson signed with Zuffa Boxing, and Foster moved on to the biggest fight available — a unification.
Video credit: Fight Hub TV.
Sound familiar? It should. This is the pattern Rnd5Media has been documenting in the ducking file all year: the fight is always one condition away, and every time the condition gets met, a new one appears — or the conversation just stops. Haney accepted the weight and got silence, then a bigger money demand. Foster beat the man he was told to beat and got the same silence. Different fighters, same playbook.
Foster also made a point that cuts deep: he says Stevenson does his loudest talking online, hoping another fighter solves the Foster problem for him. Meanwhile Foster is doing the opposite of hiding. On October 24 at Frost Bank Center in San Antonio, he walks into a three-belt unification against Navarrete — a relentless, awkward, high-volume champion who has beaten a long line of good fighters. Foster even said Navarrete didn’t truly want this matchup either, and promised to dominate from the opening bell. In the same interview he talked up his own defense as one of the best in boxing and mapped a path to undisputed at 130.
There’s a lesson in the contrast. One champion is nine days from risking his belt against a two-belt champion in his prime. The other is being accused — by a fellow champion, on the record — of hoping the problem goes away on its own. Foster stands on business, and we have backed him on this site for exactly that reason: he said who he wanted, he beat who he was told to beat, and when the door stayed shut he went and made a unification instead.
Beat Navarrete and Foster holds three belts and all the leverage at 130. At that point Shakur can keep hoping somebody else does it — or he can finally find out for himself.
