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Andreas Hale
NEW YORK — Even though he was an undefeated three-division world champion with a significantly higher profile than anyone else on the card, Shakur Stevenson was relegated to the co-main event of Ring Magazine 3 by Turki Alalshikh, the chairman of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority, presumably due to his fights not being entertaining enough. Instead, Edgar Berlanga — who lost a terribly one-sided fight to Canelo Alvarez last September — was elevated to the main event.
It was clear that Alalshikh was making a statement that he’s against the idea of “Tom & Jerry fights” (read: where one boxer runs from the other) and Stevenson’s last few fights, while dominant, fit the bill. Stevenson didn’t take many risks.
For the duration of the promotion for his WBC lightweight title defense against the offensive-minded William Zepeda, Stevenson promised that he wouldn’t be running from his opponent. And when the fight took place at Louis Armstrong Stadium on Saturday, Stevenson not only delivered on his promise, but he delivered a one-sided drubbing to Zepeda with a near shutout victory.
And after Hamzah Sheeraz wiped out Berlanga, the supposed star of the show, in five rounds, it was clear that Stevenson should never, ever be a co-main event fighter again.
“I came in here to prove a point,” said Stevenson after winning a unanimous decision. “It wasn’t the performance I was looking for because I came in here trying to prove a point, I was trying to fight. So, I took more punishment than usual. But at the end of the day, I told y’all whatever it takes to get the job done.”
Stevenson landed an absurdly high 52.5% of his punches (295 of 565) over the course of the 12-round fight. Zepeda, while busy, struggled to connect against an opponent that stood right in front of him, landing 272 of 979 punches for 27.8%, according to CompuBox.
Reading those numbers, you would wonder what Stevenson meant when he said that he took more punishment than usual. When Stevenson isn’t trying to stay in the pocket, he’s using his lateral movement to stay out of range. According to Compubox, Stevenson allows the fewest punches to land on him per round compared to other championship-caliber fighters, with a miniscule 5.4 punches landed on him per round. On Saturday, Zepeda landed 22.6 punches per round. But Stevenson won 10 of 12 rounds on two judges’ scorecards and 11 of 12 rounds on the third scorecard.
Statement made.
“Shakur Stevenson shows he’s the real deal with a huge win over William Zepeda,” Alalshikh posted on X after the fight.
Whatever the reason was for him to be in the co-main event, the champion proved that he is good enough to win fights in whatever way he wants. He’s a brilliant fighter that shouldn’t be forced to fight a different way because casual fans finds it unexciting.
Although knockouts are exciting, Sheeraz’s beatdown of Berlanga shouldn’t be expected from fighters in order to be in the main event. Boxing is an art, and the greatest practitioners of the sweet science hope to exit the sport with their wits intact. Penalizing brilliant fighters like Stevenson because their opponents aren’t good enough to beat them sends the wrong message. This is already a tough sport, and asking fighters to bludgeon each other for the sake of entertainment and abandon the defensive side of the game is preposterous.
Stevenson showed what he could do when he felt like he needed to, but now the onus shouldn’t be on him. Instead, his opponents should work harder to find ways to beat him. Hopefully, this is the last time we see a fighter punished for being too good.