Rehabilitation from recent knee surgery will prohibit Bob Arum from taking his usual ringside seat Saturday night either at Madison Square Garden or Coliseo de Puerto Rico.

The 94-year-old promoter is nonetheless looking forward to watching the Teofimo Lopez-Shakur Stevenson and Xander Zayas-Abass Baraou fights from the comfort of his Beverly Hills home. Lopez (22-1, 13 KOs) will defend his Ring and WBO junior welterweight titles against Stevenson (24-0, 11 KOs) in the 12-round main event of “The Ring 6” in New York, not long after Zayas and Baraou fight for Baraou’s WBA and Zayas’ WBO 154-pound titles in San Juan.

Arum’s company, Top Rank Inc., helped build Lopez and Stevenson into two of the best boxers in the sport.

Top Rank promoted Stevenson’s first 22 professional bouts, but they no longer work together. Top Rank remains Lopez’s promoter of record, but Arum isn’t sure Lopez – or anyone, for that matter – is up to the task of defeating the highly skilled, intelligent Stevenson at the moment.

“That’s a terrific fight,” Arum told The Ring. “That can go either way. I think until somebody shows they’re gonna outsmart Shakur in the ring, it’s hard to pick against him. Teofimo has to be able to outsmart him and outbox him and not just rely on his physical strength. On his best night, he can do that. That’s the phrase you have to remember – it’s not always his best night.”

Stevenson, ranked seventh on The Ring’s pound-for-pound list, is a 3-1 favorite, according to DraftKings, to dethrone Lopez and become a champion in a fourth division. Lopez, however, has performed at his best when he faced his two most accomplished opponents – Vasiliy Lomachenko and Josh Taylor.

Lopez won unanimous decisions over Lomachenko in October 2020 and Taylor in June 2023. The Brooklyn native respectively became a unified 135-pound champ and The Ring/WBO 140-pound champ by winning those two 12-round bouts.

Like Stevenson, Ukraine’s Lomachenko and Scotland’s Taylor fought from southpaw stances. They both retired last year.

The version of Lopez that beat Lomachenko and Taylor is the one Arum anticipates watching in a fascinating fight available to non-DAZN subscribers on pay-per-view ($69.99 in the United States; £24.99 in the United Kingdom) and to subscribers of DAZN’s Ultimate monthly plan ($44.99 in the U.S.; £24.99 in the UK).

“I think you’re gonna see the best Teofimo available, well trained, at the top of his game,” Arum said. “Whether that’s enough to beat Shakur, we’ll have to see.”

Whether Lopez can coerce the disciplined Stevenson, one of boxing’s best defensive fighters, out of his game plan will be one of the foremost factors in the outcome.

Stevenson abandoned defense at times in his last bout – an entertaining, 12-round, unanimous points victory over aggressive Mexican southpaw William Zepeda (33-1, 27 KOs) on July 12 in nearby Queens, New York. The 2016 Olympic silver medalist from Newark, New Jersey has stated that he won’t fight that recklessly again, which figures to leave Lopez and Stevenson to engage in an elite-level chess match.

Meanwhile, the Puerto Rican-born Zayas (22-0, 13 KOs) and Germany’s Baraou (17-1, 9 KOs), former sparring partners, will headline a card offered for free on the Top Rank Classics FAST channel.