In a fight where the three judges’ opinions varied widely, WBC junior lightweight champion O’Shaquie Foster (25-3, 12 KOs) defeated Raymond Ford (18-2-1, 8 KOs) by scores of 118-110, 116-112 and 114-114 Saturday at Fertitta Center in Houston, Texas.
“I’m one of the smartest people in this ring, man,” Foster said after his victory. “All I needed to do was adjust. I knew what he was going to come in with and wanted to do. I took everything away from him. I knew what his strength was, and my plan was to take it away from him.”
After the fight, Foster and Newark’s Shakur Stevenson, who won the WBO junior welterweight title in January, defeating Brooklyn’s Teofimo Lopez, held a verbal sparring session in the ring.
“Let’s do it,” Foster challenged Stevenson about a potential meeting.
“You a bum,” Stevenson shouted back.
With Stevenson recently moving to 140 pounds and Foster 10 pounds lighter, a path to a fight seems unlikely unless the pair meet in the middle at 135 or at a catchweight. Foster also said he would like to fight WBO and IBF junior lightweight titlist Emanuel Navarrete (40-2-1, 33 KOs), who is also an option.
In El Paso, Texas, on Saturday, Amanda Serrano (49-4-1, 32 KOs) retained her WBA and WBO featherweight championships by stopping Cheyenne Hanson (17-3, 13 KOs) via TKO in the second round, tying Christy Martin’s all-time women’s boxing KO record.
The UFC Freedom 250 card will be held on June 14 on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C. Frenchman Ciryl Gane, who last competed in October against UFC heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall in a match that ended in a no-contest in the first round, will take on former two-division UFC titleholder Alex Pereira in the co-main event for the UFC Interim Heavyweight strap. It is a compelling matchup — Gane looked good against Aspinall in the first round in his last fight. Meanwhile, Pereira, previously a champion at middleweight and light heavyweight, is looking to become the first man in the UFC to win titles in three different weight classes.
Boxing returns to the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Saturday, June 27, for a highly anticipated matchup between two undefeated boxers: 23-year-old WBO and WBA junior middleweight champion Xander Zayas (23-0, 13 KOs) from San Juan, Puerto Rico, will go up against Philadelphia native Jaron Ennis (35-0, 31 KOs). Ennis will turn 29 the day before the fight.
