Stevenson won’t prove Herring vs Frampton stumbling block claims champion
Jamel Herring is confident it will be Carl Frampton next but believes it may be pushed back.
The WBO super featherweight world champion was set to defend his title against the Belfast fighter in Belfast on June 13, only for the pandemic to force a change of plans.
The pair and their shared promoter Top Rank boss Bob Arum have continually talked positively about a massive meeting and once both came through ‘keep busy’ clashes over recent weeks it looked full steam ahead for November.
However, there are potentially two new spanners thrown into the works. Firstly the WBO have mandated Herring to defend his title against #1 contender Shakur Stevenson before January is done – and a cut Herring suffered during his win over Jonathan Oquendo makes November a long shot.
Herring remains confident the Stevenson issue can be sorted particularly as he too is under the Top Rank promotions win – and thinks the fight may now take place in December or January.
“I want Carl before the year is up, but Bob told me after the fight that he’d like to push the fight back ‘til December/January time frame since I’ve been constantly training throughout the summer,” said Herring when speaking to Boxingscene before addressing Stevenson.
“I know the WBO is trying to force me to fight my mandatory by January, but I know [Top Rank] obviously have other plans, so I’ll see how that goes.”
“[Stevenson and I] have stated many times in the past that we wouldn’t fight unless it was the very last resort.”
Herring didn’t look to impressive against the Puerto Rican, who was eventually disqualified for use of the head, but potentially because of the size advantage the 34-year-old Marine goes in to any possible clash as slight favourite.
The opening odds for a potential Frampton/Herring bout are razor close according to sportsbettingdime.com. The American was set at 10/13 with the Ulsterman coming back as a 1/1 underdog. It’s been nearly four years since either man was an underdog in a fight, dating back to Frampton’s first tilt with Leo Santa Cruz in 2016.
‘The Jackal’ will play little attention to the odds and will hope to upset them to make history again, just as he did against Cruz.
Victory for the 33-year-old would see him become Ireland’s first ever three weight world champ.
Speaking on the cut that some suggest may delay a date being set and the fight itself, Herring said :“No stitches. They glued the cuts instead, but I have a scratched cornea, which caused the blurred vision. Docs told me just to take time off and follow up with my doctors at home about my eye, and I had an old broken fracture in my face that didn’t heal correctly, which didn’t help the eye socket either. They wanted to make sure I didn’t have a broken orbital bone.”
