Shakur Stevenson chooses Padley: Safe Route to Davis Fight

The lightweight champion of WBC Shakur Stevenson has gone predictably with the safe selection with his replacement opponent, choosing a British national fighter Josh Padley (15-0, 4 kos) instead of the dangerous Cuban phenomenon Jadier Herrera for his defense of the title this Saturday, February 22 in Riyadh.

Turki Alalashikh revealed the news this morning that Padley #10 WBC, 29, will be the replacement opponent for Shakur (22-0, 10 kos) to fight this Saturday in a 12-round fight in the artur beterbeiev billboard vs. vs. vs. . The event will be shown Live in Dazn.

Alalshikh did not say if Stevenson’s fight vs. Padley will move below the card to the preliminaries, which would fit better with the minor fights on Saturday’s card. The fight is 100% mismatch, since Padley has no power, and the speed of his hand is slow. I do not qualify Padley as a world class.

Shakur’s strategy

Never for a moment I thought that Shakur’s promoter, Eddie Hearn, would select Herrera as his substitute opponent because he would ruin the goal of hitting the mother’s charge of Golden Richness with the fight of Gervonta Davis. To get to that fighting agreement that Shakur has with Matchroom, he has to win his first game and look outstanding. Therefore, the weak opponent, Padley, replaced the inexperienced rookie Floyd Schofield.

As expected, the Jadier del Zurdo Herrera was not chosen for Shakur because he has a power of a blow and is a much better fighter than Schofield. Herrera’s power is at the level of Gervonta Davis, and he would be completely wrong for Shakur because she would finally land something big.

The promoter of Matchroom Hearn would then be caught eating Shakur’s final fight in his contract. It would be a waste of time for him to sign it again with a new contract and put it in an expensive reconstruction work as he did with Anthony Joshua. Shakur is not going to improve when rebuilding it

Padley is for exhibition purposes, making Stevenson look better than him. It fits with some of the recent smaller opponents of Shakur, Artem Harutyunyan and Shuichiro Yoshino. Stevenson-Padley will not be competitive because Padley is a weaker opponent than any of the fighters that Shakur has fought in his last seven fights.

Surprisingly, he was given the green light as a replacement because it is not a fight that is worthy of being placed on Saturday’s card. I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall when Hearn suggested that Josh Padley was used as Shakur’s replacement to Turki instead of the talented Jadier Herrera.

Shakur Stevenson will face Josh Padley in a fight that will shake the ring 🥊 Do not miss the last crescendo 🔥 pic.twitter.com/aeaopaa08q

– Turki Alalshikh (@Turki_ALshikh) February 19, 2025