Zepeda injures hand, February Stevenson date off the table

Shakur Stevenson previously injured his hand ahead of a planned bout with Joe Cordina

William Zepeda got some very valuable experience in last week’s split decision over Tevin Farmer, but it came at a cost. “El Camaron” reports via Instagram that he suffered an injury to his left hand that doctors recommended he rest for “six to eight weeks”.

The good news is that he appears to have avoided surgery, but this does take a proposed February 22nd title fight with WBC lightweight champ Shakur Stevenson (22-0, 10 KO) completely off the table; even lowballing it at six weeks, that’s less than two months to prepare for the hardest fight of his career. It’s a bitter pill to swallow when the whole reason the Farmer fight happened was Stevenson injuring his hand.

The question now is whether Matchroom will risk the fight again by keeping Stevenson busy while Zepeda (32-0, 27 KO) recuperates. My armchair analysis says they should; he fought just once this year and you’ll want him to be confident that he can throw his left.

As for a dance partner, he’s returned to his natural hunting grounds of Twitter. George Kambosos Jr, who just signed with Matchroom, threw his hat in the ring alongside Floyd Schofield. They could also just reschedule the Joe Cordina fight; nobody was clamoring for it as best as I could tell, but that’s true of most of Stevenson’s matchups.