Comparisons to Floyd Mayweather, Pernell Whitaker, and other all-timers don’t shake out well for Shakur Stevenson

The year is 2044. Shakur Stevenson, 47-year-old retired boxing great, is going to earn in excess of $20 million for an exhibition bout against John Gotti IV, such is the enduring public interest in this crossover sports celebrity several years after his hall-of-fame induction.

Sounds not just far-fetched, but downright impossible, right?

Such a scenario is impossible not only for Stevenson, but for any boxer of his generation. That’s because Floyd Mayweather — who, at 47, headlined a pay-per-view on Saturday in an exhibition against John Gotti III and had such unilateral control over the proceedings that he could dictate a mid-match referee switch — is the ultimate boxing unicorn. He’s one of one. His super-duper-star power, particularly given that he was a frequently dull technician with modest pop in his mitts – 12 of his final 15 fights went the 12-round distance – is the result of a very specific combination of generational talent, an expertly crafted persona, and a zero on the end of his record that never went away.

In our lifetimes, we will almost certainly never see the Mayweather formula replicated.

And it’s most unfortunate for Stevenson – another sublimely skilled talent, sometimes sleep-inducing for viewers; rarely sleep-inducing for opponents; Olympic-pedigree American boxer – that he so frequently finds himself compared to Mayweather.

Nor does it help that the other boxers of the present, recent past, and less recent past to whom Stevenson is most commonly compared include Terence Crawford, Andre Ward, and Pernell Whitaker.

Stevenson is an exceptional fighter and may go down as an all-time great, but it does him no favors to have his name mentioned in the same breath as quite possibly the Mount Rushmore of proficient professional pugilists of the past 40 years.

Phase One of Stevenson’s career is over. Phase Two begins now. He has cut ties with Top Rank, turning down a reported five-fight, $15 million deal, and signed with Matchroom Boxing and, by extension, Riyadh Season, which undoubtedly positions him well financially. He is scheduled to face Joe Cordina on October 12 in the co-feature of another Saudi supercard, and is penciled in to follow that with the ultimate clash of styles against the whirlwind William Zepeda.

If all goes well in those fights — one presumes all will against Cordina; Stevenson-Zepeda is more of a mystery — Matchroom’s Eddie Hearn says that would set up a mega-fight against Gervonta “Tank” Davis in the summer of 2025.

This is around the point in his career at which Mayweather began to make the leap from highly respected boxing talent and multi-division titlist to pay-per-view headliner who became known beyond boxing’s borders and could soon command eight-figure paydays. He’d spent his 28th year marking time against DeMarcus “Chop Chop” Corley and Henry Bruseles, before being in the main event of a pay-per-view for the first time against Arturo Gatti aged 28, becoming the lineal welterweight champion at 29, and crossing over to superstardom at 30 by (a) outpointing Oscar De La Hoya, (b) stealing scenes on the first-ever HBO 24/7, (c) becoming “Money” Mayweather, and (d) appearing on Dancing with the Stars and in WWE. (Again, it is not reasonable to expect any active boxer to reproduce this.)

Stevenson is ninth in the pound-for-pound rankings, according to ESPN’s poll; neither The Ring nor the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board place him in their top 10. He’s right on that borderline, and there’s a lot of room for debate in how to perceive his professional career to this point. Stevenson dominated Oscar Valdez in 2022 in what is clearly his best win, and otherwise… the best fighters he’s faced are Joet Gonzalez, Robson Conceicao, Jeremia Nakathila, Artem Harutyunyan, and Edwin de los Santos. Some of those wins were impressive. A couple of them were dreadful and sent fans streaming for the exits early. None of them were memorable.

The Mayweather comparisons make all the logical sense in the world. And I’m as guilty as anyone of making them; see several of the preceding paragraphs in this article. But it’s a comparison Stevenson can’t possibly live up to.

Maybe he’ll prove to have comparable in-ring ability. Maaaaybe. It’s a reach — by this point in his career, Floyd was arguably pound-for-pound king already — but it’s the most realistic part of the equation.

Beyond that, it’s ridiculous to speculate that Stevenson could be the “next Mayweather”, or anything close to it. They share an ability to dazzle for a few rounds and then allow monotony to set in. That’s the main thing that connects them. (That and an end-of-Phase-One falling out with Top Rank.) That’s why their names sometimes appear in the same sentence. But that competition sets the bar far too high for the Olympic silver medalist from Newark, New Jersey.

Mayweather, though it’s easy to forget, balanced his many yawn-inducing efforts with a willingness to dig deep and get his hands dirty and give fans some action and entertainment when pressed. It’s not his signature style, certainly, but when bloodied against Miguel Cotto, when rocked by Shane Mosley, and when made uncomfortable by Marcos Maidana, he stepped up and stepped in. We have no idea yet whether Stevenson has that in him.

One thing that could work out in Stevenson’s favor – he has risen from featherweight to junior lightweight to lightweight at a time when the 135lbs division is probably the best and deepest weight class in the sport. He has, in Tank Davis, a potential opponent who could be, in various ways, his Diego Corrales, his Gatti, and his Ricky Hatton.

I do not see his De La Hoya anywhere, however.

More importantly, Stevenson doesn’t have the charisma, the gimmick, the nickname, the smile — all the elements that are make-or-break in professional wrestling and that Mayweather harnessed to further his boxing earning power. Some of that can be manufactured, like a nickname that catches on or a schtick that makes some idolize you and makes others pay money to see you lose. But the rest of it can’t be manufactured.

When traditional media and social media aren’t busy drawing a line between Stevenson and Mayweather, the next most common name dropped is that of Whitaker. “Sweet Pea”, like Stevenson, was a slick southpaw; a fighter always more likely to dominate over the distance than push for the stoppage. Mostly, comparisons between Stevenson and Whitaker have come in the form of Stevenson defenders, irked by observers calling him “boring”, insisting that if Pernell were around today, these short-attention-span, low IQ fans would be calling him boring too, so thank goodness Whitaker came along when fight fans were more sophisticated.

It’s an angle that requires quite the rewriting of history. Some adored Whitaker. Some found him boring and frustrating. Nobody denied his skill. But he was never a cash cow. His only multi-million-dollar purses came in the later stages of his career, when he was the promotional B-side against the likes of Julio Cesar Chavez, De La Hoya, and Felix Trinidad. In short, if Whitaker were around today … he’d be treated pretty much the same way he was in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

Anyway, it’s another comparison that is unfair to Stevenson. Whitaker is revered by hardcore fans and regarded as perhaps the best defensive boxer ever. There’s just no winning for Stevenson if he comes into fights with Sweet Pea as his measuring stick.

Then there are the absurdly high bars Stevenson faces through his own chosen associations. Ward and Crawford are two of his mentors; a pair always seen in his dressing him before fights. Neither is deified quite like Mayweather or Whitaker, though perhaps Crawford will be when all is said and done. But both reached the top of the pound-for-pound mountain. Both made it to the absolute highest levels of the sport. Both are – at least on the evidence seen in the past couple of years since Stevenson moved up to lightweight and has been losing rounds with a little more regularity and disappointing viewers with a lot more regularity – probably a tad out of reach.

Ward’s and Crawford’s shadows loom over Stevenson in part because their physical presence literally looms over him at his fights. And it’s adding another layer of pressure that does not end up helping him.

Nor does a statement like this, from Hearn, in announcing Stevenson’s signing: “I am delighted to welcome what I believe is a pound-for-pound great to the Matchroom team. Shakur Stevenson is 27 and already a three-division world champion and might be unbeatable in the sport of boxing.”

Nobody is unbeatable. Even Mayweather, though unbeaten, was not unbeatable. He eked by on debatable scorecards in his first fight with Jose Luis Castillo and looked plenty beatable on a handful of other occasions — because every boxer is beatable.

Hearn is just engaging in standard promotional hyperbole, of course. But it’s not fair to Stevenson. It sets up fans checking him out for the first time to be disappointed.

That was, in fact, the overarching story of Stevenson’s final two fights with Top Rank. He got these dream showcase opportunities. He faced De Los Santos on ESPN in Las Vegas on the eve of Sin City hosting its first Formula One grand prix. He took on Harutyunyan in his hometown on the 4th of July holiday weekend, again on “free” ESPN. And to the casual fan, Stevenson was sold as this otherworldly talent – his generation’s Mayweather, or Whitaker, or at least Ward or Crawford.

It didn’t go well. He added two wins to his record, but lived up to none of the hype.

What he desperately needs is comparisons that aren’t so unattainable.

What he could really use now in fact, as Phase Two begins, is for people to start out measuring him against how he performed at the end of Phase One.

You want to make Shakur Stevenson seem special? Compare him not to our distant memories of prime Floyd Mayweather or Pernell Whitaker, but to our most recent memories of Shakur Stevenson.

That’s a battle in which he’s a heavy favorite. That’s a comparison that should serve to flatter him.

Reset the bar as Phase Two begins. Stevenson is not going to make the leap that Mayweather did at this point in his career, but whatever comes next, the reality is you have to walk before you can leap.

Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with more than 25 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, Ringside Seat, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X or LinkedIn, or via email at [email protected].