By Sean Jones: Shakur Stevenson failed to make the new updated Ring Magazine pound-for-pound list despite a masterclass performance last Saturday night in whitewashing WBC super featherweight champion Oscar Valdez by a one-sided 12-round unanimous decision in Las Vegas.
Shakur looked out of this world good, better than anyone in the sport with the way he shut down an outstanding fighter in Valdez. The scores were 117-110, 118-109, and 118-109.
Poor Valdez. If it’s true that his trainer Eddy Reynoso and gym mate Canelo Alvarez were the ones that told him to fight Stevenson, he needs to switch gyms because anyone that knows anything about boxing predicted ahead of time that Shakur would route him.
As the new WBC/WBO 130-lb champion, Stevenson (18-0, 9 KOs) said after winning over the previously unbeaten Valdez (30-1, 23 KOs) that he hoped he could be added to the pound-for-pound list with Ring Magazine. Unfortunately, Stevenson’s win wasn’t significant enough to make the grade this time around.
Stevenson may need to pick off a more prominent name like Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis to get added to the pound-for-pound top 10. It won’t be easy for Stevenson to get a fight against Tank Davis because he’s been matched against any elite fighters during his career.
Ring Magazine pound for pound:
1. Canelo Alvarez
2. Oleksandr Usyk
3. Terence Crawford
4. Naoya Inoue
5. Errol Spence
6. Juan Estrada
7. Vasyl Lomachenko
8. Josh Taylor
9. Roman Gonzalez
10. Kazuto Ioka
It would make sense to have Shakur at the #8 spot in place of undisputed light welterweight champion Josh Taylor because he’s looked poor in his recent fights against Jack Catterall and Jose Ramirez.
Neither of Taylor’s last two performances compares to what we saw from Stevenson, 24, in his previous two fights.
“It was greatness, nothing less than I expected from him,” said Shawn Porter on his Podcast, reacting to Shakur Stevenson’s win over Oscar Valdez.
“I think from a Valdez perspective, it’s important for us not to suddenly say that [Oscar] Valdez is garbage,” said Carson Merk. “I had Valdez winning one round, one or two.
“If you thought that Valdez was the guy before the fight, that means you should give Shakur even more credit because he lit him up like that. I had Valdez winning one round.
“He’s kind of a puppet master where he controls the action, and that’s how he controls the ring. With Valdez, you have an explosive fighter, and he just slows him down like ‘The Force’ in Star Wars. ‘No, you stay there, you don’t hit me, but I hit you, though.’
“Valdez is this big puncher, he’s explosive, and Shakur is like, ‘No, not today. Sorry, not against me.'”
