Shakur Stevenson will fight Toka Kahn Clary in the main event of a Dec. 12 card on ESPN, Top Rank’s Carl Moretti told ESPN on Tuesday.
Top Rank announced last week that Stevenson would headline the card against a yet-to-be-named opponent.
Stevenson, 23, vacated his WBO featherweight championship in July to move up to junior lightweight in hopes of bigger challenges.
In Kahn Clary, Stevenson will face a southpaw, something Moretti said that Top Rank wanted because it would like to match up Stevenson with fellow Top Rank southpaw Vasiliy Lomachenko or work out a deal with Golden Boy southpaw and IBF junior lightweight champion JoJo Diaz in 2021.
Top Rank CEO Bob Arum said last week he expects Stevenson to challenge the winner of a scheduled January bout between Jamel Herring and Carl Frampton for the WBO junior lightweight title.
Kahn Clary (28-2, 19 KOs) is on a three-fight winning streak since losing a competitive unanimous decision to Kid Galahad in a 2018 junior lightweight title eliminator. Kahn Clary notched a second-round knockout of journeyman Jonathan Perez last month.
“Shakur is a young talented fighter. It’s a great matchup,” said Kahn Clary, 28.
“I’m a little older with more experience. We’ve both got fast hands and good footwork, but I think power and experience will be on my side. A lot of the guys he’s been fighting have been standing in front of him and pressuring him. They haven’t been using their jab, so I look forward to doing that on the 12th.”
Also on the Dec. 12 card, super middleweight prospect Edgar Berlanga, who has scored first-round knockouts in all 15 of his pro fights so far, will face a yet-to-be-named opponent, and lightweight Felix Verdejo will square off against Masayoshi Nakatani.