Official: Stevenson vs Cordina leads undercard for Beterbiev-Bivol

It’s official: Shakur Stevenson will face Joe Cordina on Oct. 12, plus much more!

Shakur Stevenson will officially face Joe Cordina in the featured undercard bout on Oct. 12 in Riyadh, the show headlined by the long-awaited showdown between Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol.

Stevenson (22-0, 10 KO) will be back in the ring in pretty short order following a July 6 decision win over Artem Harutyunyan, which was his last as a Top Rank fighter. He has a WBC lightweight title obligation against William Zepeda, but that is now targeted for Feb. 2025, and in the meantime, Cordina (17-1, 9 KO) will look to bounce back in a big way after losing his IBF super featherweight title to Anthony Cacace in May.

Also on the card:

• 34-year-old Chris Eubank Jr (33-3, 24 KO) starts his sixth or seventh career reboot with a matchup against Kamil Szeremeta (25-2-2, 8 KO), who is coming off of a 10-round draw this past February in Poland, and doesn’t seem to have really ever recovered from his back-to-back losses to Gennadiy Golovkin and Jaime Munguia in 2020-21.
• Fabio Wardley (17-0-1, 16 KO) and Frazer Clarke (8-0-1, 6 KO) will meet again in a rematch for Wardley’s British and Commonwealth titles in a very fitting setting for those UK domestic belts.
• Jai Opetaia (25-0, 19 KO) will defend his IBF cruiserweight title against Jack Massey (22-2, 12 KO). Massey is coming off of a good win over Isaac Chamberlain in June, and will probably be the second-best opponent of Opetaia’s career, but Opetaia will still obviously be a big favorite.
• Ben Whittaker (8-0, 5 KO) returns against Liam Cameron (23-6, 10 KO), who did give Lyndon Arthur a pretty good run in a June loss.
• Skye Nicolson (11-0, 1 KO) will defend her WBC featherweight title against Raven Chapman (9-0, 2 KO). Nicolson will be rightly favored, but it’s about as good a fight as there is for Skye right now, too.