Featherweight prospect Shakur Stevenson found out on Friday who his new opponent will be: battle-tested Viorel Simion.
Stevenson, a 2016 U.S. Olympic silver medalist and one of the top prospects in boxing, was due to fight Duarn Vue in his first scheduled 10-round bout in the co-feature of the Top Rank Boxing on ESPN card on Oct. 13 (ESPN and ESPN Deportes, 10:30 p.m. ET with the preliminary action streaming on ESPN+ beginning at 7 p.m. ET) on the show headlined by welterweight world titlist Terence Crawford defending against Jose Benavidez Jr. at the CHI Health Center in Crawford’s hometown of Omaha, Nebraska.
However, Vue (14-1-2, 4 KOs), 32, of Madison, Wisconsin, withdrew from the fight on Wednesday because of a detached retina. On Friday, Top Rank secured Simion as the new opponent for Stevenson (8-0, 4 KOs), a 21-year-old southpaw from Newark, New Jersey.
Simion (21-2, 9 KOs), 36, of Romania, won more than 300 fights as an amateur and represented his country in the 2004 Olympics.
His only professional losses came by decision to top opponents, former featherweight world titlist Lee Selby in 2013 and former junior featherweight world titleholder Scott Quigg in 2017.
Simion has not fought since dropping a 12-round decision to Quigg in April 2017 on the undercard of the Anthony Joshua-Wladimir Klitschko heavyweight title fight at Wembley Stadium in London.
“He will test Shakur Stevenson from the opening bell to the final bell,” Top Rank vice president Carl Moretti told ESPN. “Shakur has trained to go 10 rounds, and he’ll need it.”