Two reactions to the same fight told two different stories, and Fannon International Boxing Channel spent a video pulling them apart.
Start with what O’Shaquie Foster did to earn any reaction at all. Fannon had him dominating Emanuel Navarrete — outboxing him from the beginning, mixing it up with him in the middle, then stepping on the gas at the end and dropping him two times in the 12th round to secure it. Fannon’s one complaint ran the other direction: the scorecards were a little closer than he thought they should be.
Shakur Stevenson’s reaction, as Fannon relayed it, was credit with a complaint stapled to it: he would give Foster his credit even though Foster would not give him his, Foster really showed what level he was at, that is a fight that gets him out of bed, they can hook up whenever Foster is ready, and he will catch up with him after his undisputed run. Fannon’s read was blunt — he called Shakur unbelievably arrogant, said the ego is fragile, and pointed out that Foster has never said Shakur is not a top-level fighter. The only thing Foster has ever said is that he can beat him. There is a difference, and after Saturday night Fannon expects that fight to be very hard to judge, because Foster is coming at Shakur with real weapons — Foster has said his skill set is similar to Terence Crawford’s, and Fannon said he kind of agrees, minus the power Crawford built at 140 and 147.
Then there was Tank Davis, whose reaction Fannon called funny: Tank wanted to act like he did not even see it. “What? O’Shaquie fighting tonight? Had no idea.” Fannon was not buying a word of it — everybody was watching that fight. His actual advice for Tank was practical: get a tune-up first. A very active Foster is a lot of problems, and activity is the whole argument. Foster won three fights this year, including Stephen Fulton and Navarrete. Shakur, Fannon noted, has fought one time in a year. Tank has fought one time in the last two years. That inactivity question is the same one Greg Hackett was asking about Tank before the fight even happened.
Foster worked his way from the bottom up — no Olympic medal, no bidding war, no machine behind him. He is a real fighter in a division full of managed careers, and now both of the names who treated him like an afterthought have to talk about him. Believe it, because the belts already said it.
Video credit: Fannon International Boxing Channel.
