Three Belts, One Man Left Standing
Right then. Emanuel Navarrete brings the WBO and IBF super featherweight titles to the Frost Bank Center in San Antonio on Saturday. O’Shaquie Foster brings the WBC belt. One of them leaves with all three, and the winner is the man every other 130lb fighter has to deal with.
It is live on DAZN from 8pm ET, so for those of us in the UK it is a very late night. Worth the coffee. Let’s not beat around the bush, this is the best fight in the division.
The Numbers Tell You Who Wants It Over Early
Look at the records. Navarrete is 40-2-1 with 33 knockouts. Foster is 25-3 with 12. Do the sums and it is roughly four in every five of Navarrete’s wins ending inside the distance, against less than half of Foster’s. One of these men finishes fights. The other wins them.
That does not make Foster a lesser fighter. It makes him a different one. Foster is a technician who wins rounds, and rounds are exactly what he needs to bank over twelve against somebody who throws as many shots as Navarrete does.
The Injury Excuse Is Gone
Navarrete has been honest that injuries stopped him being at his best in recent outings. His line at the press conference was “there are no excuses now”, and he called Foster a very skilled fighter with a lot of weapons. I like that. A fighter who respects the man opposite him and has nothing left to blame is a dangerous animal.
If the Mexican is fully fit, we have not seen a fully fit Navarrete in this kind of fight for a while. That is the biggest unknown in the whole thing.
How Foster Wins
He wins by being first, by moving off the line and by not giving Navarrete a target to load up on. Straight shots down the middle, step to the side, reset, repeat. Do that for thirty-six minutes and he takes a decision, and the whole division has to rethink him.
Foster promised a boxing lesson and control from round one. Brilliant. The problem is that controlling Navarrete means staying out of the phone box, and that is a much harder job than saying it in front of a microphone.
Luke’s Verdict
I have been on this one since it was announced, and fight week has not changed my mind. Foster will win early rounds. Navarrete will keep coming, keep landing to the body, and by the second half of the fight the gap in punch volume and physical size starts to show.
My prediction: Navarrete by stoppage in the tenth or eleventh round, and all three belts go back to Mexico.
Full details of the card are on our fight schedule, and there is more from the build-up on the news page.