Shakur Stevenson says he doesn’t need a tuneup to prepare for his fight against William Zepeda in February. Stevenson assumes he won’t get injured again with another hand ailment that could ruin his plans and cause further delay.
It’s not so much the time that WBC lightweight champion Shakur (22-0, 10 KOs) will have been out of the ring but rather the lack of preparation on his part to get him ready for a guy like Zepeda (31-0, 27 KOs).
Shakur looked bad with the pressure he received in his fight against Edwin De Los Santos last November. Against that big puncher, Stevenson was stressing out after getting hit with some monstrous shots early on.
The 2016 Olympic silver medalist Shakur completely abandoned attempting to fight De Los Santos and was running around the around the ring, ignoring the boos. Shakur landed only occasional jabs, but nothing else besides that.
The judges gave Shakur, the A-side fighter, the win, but he didn’t look like he’d done enough. After the fight, Shakur blamed his performance on a hand injury. Few fans bought into that excuse, noting how scared-looking Shakur appeared after being tagged hard by De Los Santos in rounds one and two. Stevenson didn’t want to get knocked out, so he took off running.
De Los Santos is nowhere near as good a pressure fighter as William Zepeda and doesn’t target the body the way he does. He also lacks the punchput that Zepeda possesses. Shakur has many more problems against Zepeda than with De Los Santos.
The Mexican fighter is the kind of pressure fighter that Shakur has never seen in the pro ranks and a pure nightmare for a light hitter like him. Zepeda destroyed a Shakur-like fighter in Giovanni Cabrera, knocking him out in the third round on July 6th.
Cabrera tried all the same tricks as Shakur, using the three-step pull-back style and running around the ring, but he wasn’t effective against Zepeda. He repeatedly cut off the ring on Cabrera and forced him into an inside game, chopping him apart. What was interesting about that fight was how Zepeda started slowly in the first two rounds, throwing only 50+ punches per round.
By the third round, Zepeda was throwing nonstop shots in a machine-gun fashion and was too much for Cabrera, who went down in a heap after getting caught with a body shot and was counted out.
If Shakur loses this fight, his career is going to be exactly where Devin Haney’s is now after his recent defeat against Ryan Garcia. Stevenson can forget about his dreams of a fight against Gervonta Davis.
His promoter, Eddie Hearn, will need to decide what to do with Skakur in the remaining fight on his two-fight contract. Hearn may choose to throw Skakur to the wolves by feeding him to 2020 Olympic gold medalist Andy Cruz and watching him finish off his career.
It would be pointless for Hearn to waste the remaining fight of Shakur’s contract by matching him against a soft touch if he plans on washing his hands of him.
Yeah gotta realize I know what I’m capable of, I don’t need tune ups I been doing this my whole life I’m forever in the gym, February gone be a movie 🦾 https://t.co/cv2zx0AO4x
— Shakur Stevenson (@ShakurStevenson) September 25, 2024
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