Shakur Stevenson insists the toughest fight of his career has already happened: “He was your best hope”

Many in the sport believe Shakur Stevenson could retire undefeated, following in the footsteps of his friend Terence Crawford. Stevenson himself is certainly convinced that will be the case.

A four-division world champion at 28 years old, Stevenson’s most recent triumph came against Teofimo Lopez in the super-lightweight ranks. After some questioned whether the move up in weight would cost the Newark southpaw his trademark elusiveness, he instead put on a clinic, winning almost every round against Lopez, who has previously beaten great champions in Vasiliy Lomachenko and Josh Taylor.

He now holds the WBO belt at 140lbs, and has options there, up and down. Though stripped of the WBC belt at lightweight, Stevenson has not ruled out a drop back down. There are intriguing defences or unifications for him to make where he is, and it’s likely he will ultimately move up to welterweight, though he has pumped the brakes on talk of doing that too soon.

With names like Gervonta Davis, Devin Haney and Ryan Garcia all in the mix, the debate now centres on not who can beat Stevenson, but who can even test him.

In his mind, nobody can – and he told Cigar Talk recently that his toughest fight has already happened.

“It ain’t going to happen [somebody having a close fight against me]. The most y’all ever going to get is Zepeda – that was y’all’s best hope and chance at getting resistance.

“His style, styles make fights. The style that would give me the most resistance would be the guy who throws a million punches a round, and doesn’t stop punching.”

Shakur successfully defended his lightweight strap against Mexico’s Zepeda in July of 2025. Motivated by criticism of his defensive style, he took a different approach and fought much of the fight in the pocket. It proved to be entertaining, but was a risky strategy against one of the sport’s highest volume punchers who boasts 27 knockouts in 33 wins.

Despite being caught on the ropes on a couple of occasions, Stevenson still came away winning clearly on all three judges’ scorecards and, in his mind, bulletproof from any future challenge.