Lightweight contender William Zepeda will have a lot of pressure on him this Saturday to impress in his 10-round fight against Tevin Farmer at The Venue in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The Latino Night event is non-PPV, live on DAZN.
Promoter Oscar De La Hoya says that Zepeda (31-0, 27 KOs) must look phenomenal because fans are talking only about him fighting Shakur Stevenson next and not about his fight against former IBF super featherweight champion Farmer (33-6-1, 8 KOs).
Zepeda’s fight with the 34-year-old Farmer is buried on the undercard below the Gilberto ‘Zurdo’ Ramirez vs. Chris Billiam-Smith and Jose Ramirez vs. Arnold Barboza Jr. fights.
Those matches aren’t being talked about a lot either, but their position on the card suggests that Golden Boy Promotions feel they’re more important. The fan interest in either of those fights isn’t there, and Golden Boy obviously made the mistake of misjudging what fans wanted to see.
Zepeda Must Look Phenomenal
“William Zepeda has the most difficult task at hand on Latino Night because everybody is not talking about his fight with Farmer. Everybody is talking about Zepeda vs. Shakur Stevenson,” said Oscar De La Hoya to Boxing King Media about this Saturday’s card in Riyadh. “So, that adds pressure to you.”
The problem with the Zepeda-Farmer fight is that Farmer is coming off a 10-round unanimous decision loss to Raymond Muratalla on July 13th in Las Vegas. That right destroyed much of the interest in the fight with Zepeda because there’s no suspense. Fans already know Zepeda is using Farmer as a tuneup and will dispatch within six rounds. Farmer can’t punch and has nothing to hold Zepeda off of him.
“William Zepeda has to look phenomenal,” said De La Hoya. “He has to impress and maybe even knock out Farmer and look like an animal. He has to look vicious. Then, his future fight with Shakur Stevenson will be a monster fight.”
Zepeda probably will impress and steal the thunder from the Zurdo Ramirez vs. Billiam-Smith and Ramirez vs. Barboza Jr. fights. Zurdo was never popular, and what interest fans had in his career disappeared after his one-sided loss to Dmitry Bivol in 2022.
Zepeda Wants To Make A Statement
“So, there’s a lot of added pressure, but William Zepeda is a professional, a fighter we never had the opportunity to watch because, unfortunately, he passed away at an early age [23],” said De La Hoya. “He [Zepeda] throws a lot of punches, and he throws them with a lot of force. He wants to knock you out. He wants to make a statement.”
Zepeda fights nothing like the late Salvador Sanchez. The two fighters are entirely different and have nothing in common with their styles. De La Hoya was likely too young to remember watching Sanchez before he passed away.
“Oscar Duarte, if he wins this fight [Botirzhon Akhmedov], which is not going to be easy, but it’s going to be entertaining. If he wins this fight, I will put him in against Devin Haney in a very small ring,” said a smiling De La Hoya.
