Shakur Stevenson vowing to perform better in his next fight

By Boxing News - 06/15/2021 - Comments

By Chris Williams: Shakur Stevenson says he’s ready to get back in the gym to begin training for his next fight and he says know he can perform better than he did last Saturday night against Jeremiah Nakathilia.

Stevenson (16-0, 8 KOs) has been stung by criticism from many boxing fans for his decision to play it safe, and make it boring by not taking chances to make it entertaining.

Rather than going after the very limited Nakathilia to try and knock him out, the former WBO featherweight champion Stevenson threw exclusively single punches and looked terrified each time his opponent came forward.

More infuriating was the way Stevenson backed away each time Nakathila would come forward to engage.

The inability to stand his ground when met with pressure from Nakathila made the fight virtually unwatchable, which is disappointing because Shakur is being hyped by his promoter Bob Arum as the next big star in the sport.

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If Stevenson is serious about wanting to improve, he needs to revamp his fighting style, throw away the boring Mayweather/Sweep Pea Pernell Whitaker blueprint that he appears to be following, and change his game up to the 21st century by patterning his fighting style after Nonito Donaire, Manny Pacquiao or Emanuel Navarrete.

Those three have perhaps the most entertaining fighting styles in boxing today. Not even Canelo Alvarez or Gennadiy Golovkin can match the excitement of those three with their all-out aggression.

Shakur blaming Nakathilia for his boring performance

“To be honest, I didn’t really like my performance. I felt I could’ve performed a lot better, but it was an awkward fighter,” said Stevenson after the fight in failing to take responsibility for his lackluster performance.”

As you can see from Shakur’s above comments, he’s not owning the part that he played in making his fight with Nakathilia boring to watch. Instead of taking responsibility for boring the fans to tears, Stevenson blames it on Nakathilia by saying he’s “an awkward fighter.” That’s pretty sad, and it shows you what his promoter Bob Arum is up against.

Some fighters you can’t change, particularly those unwilling to look in the mirror and realize that they need to improve. Shakur is a textbook example of a fighter that can’t accept that his fighting style is just so boring to watch.