Emanuel Navarrete locked in on O'Shaquie Foster as legacy plays loom

Emanuel Navarrete may bring a solitary focus to Saturday’s super-featherweight unification against O’Shaquie Foster, but so much more is at stake if the Mexican power puncher wins the fight.

The mantle of standing as his nation’s most distinguished champion.

A future match with Hall-of-Fame-bound, three-division champion Vasiliy Lomachenko.

One triumph away from being 130lbs undisputed champion.

“Honestly, I am very focused on this fight with O’Shaquie Foster,” WBO-IBF champion Navarrete, 40-2-1 (33 KOs), said of the DAZN-streamed main event versus Houston’s Foster, 25-3 (12 KOs), at San Antonio’s Frost Bank Center. “It’s an important fight and I don’t want to get ahead of myself and rush into any thoughts.”

Yet, the 31-year-old three-division champion coming off a February drubbing of former IBF champion Eduardo “Sugar” Nunez must know the legacy ramifications of this bout against a rapidly developing boxer in what some project as a fight-of-the-year candidate.

Navarrete said he devoted a “very long and solid, hard camp” to ensure “I present myself to all the people with a good fight.

“Foster is very good, very solid, very confident. The styles are completely different. The outcome will depend a lot on each fighter’s style. The preparation I had will help me a lot. I’m very strong and I believe that can be an advantage – to close the fight with strength and try to take the victory.

‘We know what Foster does – and we worked very hard on this – and we are prepared to stop this. It should not be so complicated. We know how the fight will be.”

Yet, it’s Foster who has given his opponent more research, personally attending several of Navarrete’s recent bouts, including the stoppage of Nunez and the narrow technical decision last year over Charly Suarez.

Navarrete has limited his scouting of Foster to some bouts he’s watched his countrymen fight Foster on television.

“Including the last one,” Navarrete said of Foster’s majority decision victory over Ray Ford. “[Foster] does have something with the fact he’s seen my fights live, but when we’re in the fight, it’s going to be different.

“Receiving [punches], feeling the blows, knowing how I hit… trying to decipher something you’re seeing from below is not the same. To have the idea of how to resolve it in the main event is different.”

Navarrete has experienced difficulties in recent bouts, enabled by a fortunate ruling to edge Suarez and losing a lightweight title shot against Denys Berinchyk, but he overpowered Nunez and has repeated the preparation for Foster, he said.

“The physical aspects … I have worked the same way, on nutrition,” Navarrete said. “We modified everything and we have improved situations that at first didn’t turn out so well. Now we’re better.”

He maintains belief that no super-featherweight can weather his storm over 12 rounds.

“I do think that … that’s very important, because very few fighters can,” he said. “One level is not enough. They just continue to move forward, continue enduring. I think there are very good fighters who may have never felt the punishment.”

As Ukraine’s Lomachenko attempts to come back from a two-year absence to meet WBA 130lbs champion Anthony Cacace and position for an undisputed fight with the Navarrete-Foster winner next year, Navarrete admits he has dreamed of a showdown with “The Matrix.”

“Always when a fighter of the level of Lomachenko is around, it would be interesting to know how difficult he is or how many problems there can be with the technique that he delivers and what he does when he fights,” Navarrete said.

The bout would become more riveting based on the fact that a victorious Navarrete – already slotted in the group of top-10pound-for-pound fighters –  will be poised to challenge as Mexico’s most significant champion should countryman Canelo Alvarez lose in his attempt to recapture the WBC super-middleweight belt versus champion Christian Mbilli October 31 in Saudi Arabia.

“It may depend on more things… there are very talented fighters from Mexico and I don’t like to consider myself as the best,” Navarrete said.

“I always focus on myself being ready to have a good fight and a good career, and the rest is left to the analysts and the people, those who dedicate themselves to making a list of fighters.”