Cor Satchmo In The Big Apple

On July 12, the 14,000-seat Louis Armstrong Stadium at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens, New York, will host its first-ever boxing event.

Headlining the card is England’s Hamzah Sheeraz, with a 21-0-1 (17 KOs) record, who will move up a weight class to face Brooklyn’s Edgar Berlanga, with a 23-1 (18 KOs) record, in a super middleweight bout.

In the second main event of the evening, Shakur Stevenson, with a 23-0 (11 KOs) record, and William Zepeda, with a 33-0 (27 KOs) record, will face off in a WBC lightweight title consolidation bout.

Stevenson, a 2016 Olympic silver medalist and three-division champion from Newark, New Jersey, is the WBC Absolute champion. Mexican Zepeda holds the WBC’s interim title.

A press conference was held Thursday at the Palladium Times Square in New York City, where the main characters of the card mingled.