GLENDALE, Ariz. – Three of the four major titleholders in the 130lbs division will be in the house Saturday.
Emanuel Navarrete and Eduardo “Sugar” Nunez will, of course, share the ring for their WBO-IBF unification bout this Saturday at Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Arizona. Among the most interested observers on the night will be WBC junior lightweight titlist O’Shaquie Foster, who – despite not actually fighting – is here far more for business than pleasure.
“I’m excited to see the outcome of this,” Foster told BoxingScene. “Not just because I want the winner. I really think it’s going to be a great, entertaining fight. I’m real interested and ready to be front row for it.
“I’m really interested to see if the winner will really look my way for a [three-belt] unification so we can make something happen at 130. We’re looking at this real close.”
Foster, 24-3 (12 KOs), openly committed to maintaining his WBC 130lbs title reign shortly after his December 6 landslide win over Stephen Fulton in San Antonio.
Foster-Fulton was originally scheduled as a title defense before Fulton badly blew weight. Event handlers for the PBC on Prime pay-per-view card contacted WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman to allow a participation trophy at stake to sanction the fight as a lightweight contest.
Foster, who hails from the greater Houston area, still weighed in at the 130lbs limit and dominated Fulton over 12 rounds to claim the interim 135lbs belt. With the option to remain at lightweight or return to 130lbs, Foster chose the latter with the sole intention of finishing what he started at the weight.
“Hopefully we can close out this division. Hopefully,” reiterated Foster. “That’s all I can see. We got to keep unifying until there’s just one of us left. I’m willing to stay here as long as we know those fights are coming.
“Otherwise, I’ll go see who I can beat up at 135.”
Rounding out the division’s titleholders, James “Jazza” Dickens, 36-5 (15 KOs), currently owns the WBA belt. A 34-year-old southpaw from Liverpool, Dickens is due to face former IBF titlist Anthony Cacace, 24-1 (9 KOs), on March 14 in Dublin. The fight date fits within the timeline, should Foster need to seek another avenue.
For now, task one is to entice – if not embarrass – Saturday’s winner into further unifying.
Foster and Navarrete, 39-2-1 (32 KOs), are both with Top Rank, though the company remains without a network or platform deal. Nunez, 30-1 (28 KOs), of Los Mochis, Mexico, primarily fights for BXSTRS Promotions but is also signed to Matchroom Boxing, which just signed a five-year extension with DAZN guaranteeing the global promotional outfit upwards of 30 shows per year.
Navarrete is favored to win Saturday, though most experts view it more as a can’t-miss action fight without too much focus on who will come out on top.
Foster has an idea of who will win but is also curious about the willingness of either to bump with him in the near future.
“I feel as if Navarrete will pull it off,” Foster said. “He has the experience and he has a lot of different elements to his game than Nunez. Opportunity-wise, Navarrete is the bigger name, but Top Rank is still trying to get back on TV. Nunez has DAZN behind him, and Eddie [Hearn] just signed for [another five] years.
“I never got the sense in the past that Navarrete really want to fight me, but maybe he’ll feel different if he beats this guy. But, I mean, Nunez turned us down before. My first time as WBC champion, before we wound up fighting Rocky [Eduardo Hernandez], we offered him the fight and he turned us down. That’s why I didn’t really understand why they called him the boogeyman. But we’ll see if he’s more interested now, but let’s see what happens on Saturday.”
