By Jim Dower: Undefeated prospect Shakur Stevenson (4-0, 2 KOs) showed tons of promise tonight in blasting out a limited Oscar Mendoza (4-3, 2 KOs) in featherweight action in winning a 2nd round TKO on Saturday night in a Top Rank promoted card on ESPN at Madison Square Garden in New York.
The referee called a stop to the bout in round 2 due to Mendoza unable to adequately defend himself. It was pure target practice for Stevenson tonight.
Stevenson, 20, was hitting Mendoza with laser like lefts and rights to the body and head in rounds 1 and 2. Mendoza was unable to block any of the shots. The punches were accurate and thrown to areas where Mendoza was unable to block them.
The fight was stopped by the referee in round 2 at the 1:37 mark.
Top Rank needs to improve the level of opposition for the 2016 U.S Olympic silver medalist Stevenson. He can do much better than this. Top Rank needs to step Stevenson up a level against one of the better fighters in the division or at least a good 2nd tier fighter. The guy Stevenson was facing tonight was little more than an over-matched prospect with limited skills.
Stevenson has some talent. We’re just not going to find out how much talent he has until he gets stepped up against a guy with enough ability to give him some rounds and a true test. It’s unlikely that Top Rank will move Stevenson up as fast as they did with Vasyl Lomachenko, because he didn’t have the same kind of long amateur career or the same kind of success as he did.
Lomachenko captured 2 Olympic gold medals for Ukraine and he finished his amateur career with a 396-1 record. Stevenson wasn’t that type of talent. He lost his Olympic finals match in the 2016 Olympics. It’s likely Top Rank will wait until Stevenson has had well over 20 fights as a pro before they start putting him in with better opposition.
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In other results on the card, unbeaten super featherweight prospect Christopher Diaz (22-0, 14 KOs) stopped Bryant Cruz (18-3, 9 KOs) in the 3rd round in a fight for the vacant WBO NABO super featherweight title. Diaz knocked Cruz down in the 3rd round with a left hook. The referee Harvey Dock then stopped the fight. The time of the stoppage was at 0:37 of round 3. Diaz knocked Cruz down twice in round 2 and once in round 1. The knockdowns in round 2 came from left hooks from Diaz that had looking badly hurt. In the 1st round, Diaz knocked Cruz down with a left-right combination.