Everybody loves a beautiful painting. Almost nobody, however, wants to sit in a musty art studio for two weeks, watching while the artist painstakingly crafts his masterpiece and demonstrates his mastery.
That pretty much describes the career trajectory of Shakur Stevenson up until Saturday night. The young man came up a well-deserved blue-chipper and his elite-level talent and skill were always obvious. His ring performances, though, were often about as scintillating as watching a master painter clean his brushes.
As a result, Stevenson was universally regarded as one of the young greats, but very few regarded him as a “must see” star.
That likely changed this past Saturday when he turned up the heat and touched up defending WBO super featherweight champ Jamel Herring in a dominant TKO 10 performance to officially become a two-division world champ.
The 24-year-old Stevenson started aggressive in his ESPN main event bout and stayed aggressive throughout, occasionally amping up the pressure to keep Herring perpetually on defense.
The 35-year-old defending champ and former Marine could never get his rhythm or his footing underneath him and he had absolutely no answer for his younger foe’s hand speed. With the exception of a few one-off shots in the middle rounds, Herring could do nothing of note. One would be hard pressed to find a more one-sided fight, touted as a competitive challenge beforehand, in recent memory. By the time of the referee stoppage in the tenth round, Stevenson was hopelessly ahead and showing no signs of slowing down. Herring protested the stoppage and fans hollered about a quick ending, but everybody knew that this fight was well out of reach and that the defending champ could only look forward to another two-and-a-half rounds of punishment.
Stevenson’s dominance could be attributed to finding his grove very early on and just never letting up. Unlike other performances, he didn’t find that groove and just do enough to pile up points. He actually fought like a pro and fought to get his guy out of there. Could it be that he’s finally absorbed the fact– in the biggest fight of his career– that it takes a show to make a star?
Whatever the case, Stevenson’s performance against Herring was a star-affirming outing. It should wipe the slate clean, at least temporarily, of that persistent nag about him that he’s boring and that he fights with the lack of urgency of someone accustomed to being far, far superior to everyone he’s been matched against. If this wasn’t a planned coming out party by Shakur, himself, then it should serve as a lesson to Top Rank matchmakers– skip the soft touches and match the kid tough, he can handle it and will fight up to the level of his opposition.
Seeing Shakur tear Herring apart like he did makes you wonder how much more buzz he could’ve generated on his way up the ladder if he had fought lesser opponents with the same fire.
If he can keep his mindset in sharp-and-aggressive mode, breakthrough stardom could be a real thing for him. He’s certainly talented enough. There’s also plenty of greatness-defining opposition out there in his general weight range, from in-house Top Rank names like Teofimo Lopez, Vasiliy Lomachenko, Oscar Valdez, Emanuel Navarrete, and Miguel Berchelt to cross-company PPV-level foes like of Gervonta Davis, Devin Haney, Ryan Garcia, and Leo Santz Cruz.
The stage is now set for Shakur Stevenson to make the move towards next-level stardom. Actually, that stage has been set for a long time already, it just took awhile for him and/or his team to realize that “just winning” may get you belts, but it won’t make fans care about your efforts.
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I’d be remiss in my responsibilities as a jaded, cynical boxing media curmudgeon if I didn’t point out the utter pointlessness of the whole “Teofimo Lopez and Devin Haney arguing at ringside” story.
When the two young lightweight titlists verbally tore into one another after the Mikey Garcia-Sandor Martin fight at Chukchansi Park in Fresno, boxing media keyboard slappers came in their panties a little bit. What fucking awesome headline fodder! All those bad words! All that machismo! Squirt, squirt!
But anyone with even half a boxing brain knows that nothing will come from any of this.
Teofimo may be fighting his next bout on DAZN, but that’s only because of a purse bid technicality (having to do with Triller defaulting on their bid and Top Rank not wanting to pay a bundle for a Lopez-George Kambosos mugging). After Lopez beats the vegemite out of the Australian, there’s zero chance of Top Rank/ESPN letting their young, hot property out of their grasp again any time soon.
Similarly, Haney is a DAZN contract player and a key player in an increasingly shrinking pool of high-end, attention-grabbing fighters for the streaming service. He’s not headed to ESPN for a fight he could very well lose.
And, no matter how “big” some fans and media may see the pairing, there just isn’t enough money in Lopez-Haney right now to justify a cooperative ESPN-DAZN pay-per-view.
So, yeah, it’s fun to see these guys talking smack to one another and, for media, it’s a low-hanging fruit of a story that writes itself, requiring little thought or research. But, come on…
Got something for Magno? Send it here: paulmagno@theboxingtribune.com
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