Richardson Hitchins says Gervonta Davis won’t have respect for Shakur Stevenson now after his abysmal effort against Edwin De Los Santos on November 16th.
Hitchins feels that Tank Davis will be “licking his chops” not at the thought of fighting newly crowned WBC lightweight champion Stevenson (21-0, 10 KOs) because he won’t want to engage.
The defensive style that Shakur used in that fight makes it unlikely that Tank Davis or any of the super popular fighters will ever fight him.
Tank has never fought the likes of Vasily Lomachenko, Devin Haney, or Teofimo Lopez, so he’s surely NOT going to fight a timid runner who is on the opposite side of the street, promoted by Top Rank.
What Shakur must do to get Tank Davis fight:
- Change promoters & network
- Become a popular PPV & gate attraction
- Agree to 90-10 split
- Stop using the pull-back style
- Fight in the pocket
Suffice it to say, it’s impossible for Shakur Stevenson to change any of those five areas above because it’s not in his nature to be what he’s not.
He can’t abandon his pull-back style to fight out of the pocket because he’d likely get blasted out by any powerful fighter. It wouldn’t have taken Gervonta to destroy Shakur if he had fought without moving.
ANY fighter with halfway decent power would do the job of beating Shakur, and Top Rank would likely not extend his contract when it expires after his next fight. Why would they want to give Shakur a new contract if can’t entertain the fans due to his running nature?
Like many people, Richardson isn’t sure what kind of injury the 26-year-old Shakur had for his fight with De Los Santos, and he doesn’t know how it ultimately impacted his willingness to engage.
Stevenson’s promoters at Top Rank said he was injured, but we didn’t see any x-rays or a doctor’s note to verify the excuse. Supposedly, Shakur had a shoulder injury that he suffered several weeks before his fight with De Los Santos.
Top Rank promoter Bob Arum didn’t say if Shakur has been injured his entire professional and amateur career because he’s always fought with the same style as we saw against De Los Santos, using his same old pullback.
Nothing was different in that fight from any of Shakur’s past performances, apart from his opponent having major power and actual talent.
Tank will have less respect for Shakur
“I feel like after his [Shakur Stevenson] last performance, Tank will probably have less respect. ‘If this [person] had you looking like that, imagine what I would do,'” said Richardson Hitchins to Fighthype about Gervonta Davis viewing Shakur Stevenson as beatable after his timid performance against Edwin De Los Santos.
What does Richardson mean by saying Tank will “probably have less respect” for Shakur? Of course, he’s going to have less respect because he saw a chicken, and this wasn’t the first time. Stevenson fought the same exact way in his fights against these guys:
Jeremiah Nakathilia
Oscar Valdez
Joet Gonzalez
Robson Conceicao
Robeisy Ramirez
Jamel Herring
“I wasn’t sure who was winning the fight,” said Richardson about Shakur’s fight with De Los Santos on November 16th. “Even after the fight was over, I didn’t know if it was a draw, a split. I wasn’t sure who was winning.
“Even today, replaying that moment in my head, it’s not like, ‘Oh yeah, maybe Shakur did pull it out in the last round.’ It was like neck & neck the whole fight.”
Chris Williams is in agreement with Richarson. It was impossible to pick a winner in the Shakur vs. De Los Santos fight at the end because neither of them did enough to win. Yeah, Shakur got the win, but you can argue the only reason he did was because he was the A-side.
If De Los Santos was the A-side fighter, with millions thrown into his career by Top Rank, do you think the judges would have given him a loss?
That’s why Shakur will never beat Gervonta because he would be the B-side against the Mayweather promoted fighter, and the judges would give it to him. Shakur could run like a bat out of hell all night like he did against De Los Santos, but the judges won’t give him another gift win.
“So, I feel like if I’m in a fight as a guy, ‘I want to win badly. Yeah, you have power, but I’ve been in this ring already,” said Richardson. “I’ve been in this ring with you for twelve rounds. I’ve got your timing down pack.
“‘I’ve got your certain s*** figured out what you’re trying to set me up with, and I’m not sure if I’m winning this fight.’ So it’s like, I got to make some s*** shake to make sure the judges know that I’m winning, especially in a close fight,” said Richardson.
Shakur could have done more to earn win against De Los Santos
“I feel like Shakur could have done that and kind of put a stamp. ‘Alright, I f**** up the whole fight, but let me give y’all 10, 11 and 12. Take that.’ But Shakur, you picked it up too late. I don’t know what his injury was. I still don’t know to this day what his injury felt like,” said Hitchins.
Shakur should have shown some effort to win the championship rounds against De Los Santos, but he failed to. Sadly, Shakur didn’t even try to put a stamp on his victory by fighting aggressively in around 10 through 12.
Chris Williams gave the last three rounds to De Los Santos, including four of the first six, based just on aggression and landing the much harder shots.
“I know he was saying that he really didn’t feel himself the fight night,” said Richardson.”He felt f*** up and didn’t feel good at all. I think that maybe could have felt a part with it.
“He got the W, that’s most important. We’re going to be talking this right now, but in his next fight, we’re not going to be talking about it. We’ll be talking about that fight.”
The excuse about Shakur not feeling good doesn’t hold water because he always fights the same way, and we didn’t hear injury excuses in his previous 20 fights. He ran & held in all of those fights.
“If he would have lost, we’d be talking about this forever,” said Richardson. “So it is what it is. I don’t know how Shakur felt. Maybe his body felt like he had overtrained. Maybe his body felt weak. There’s nothing you can really do. It’s your body. That’s how you feel. It’s f*** up that he had to feel that way in front of the world.”
Richardson might not have been keeping track of things, but Shakur did lose in the big scheme of things. His performance was so bad against De Los Santo that he did lose, because he was booed from the second round on.
Fans at home hated it, and none of the top fighters are saying they want to fight him now. It would have been better if Shakur had lost because the loss that he took by fighting like a chicken will hurt his career a lot more.
“Shakur’s not worried about anything because he won the fight. He’s just worried about whoever he’s got to fight next. I feel like that was the best way he could have played out,” said Hitchins.
Gervonta is licking his chops now
“If I was Tank, that would be my mindset. ‘Oh, I’m going to kill you.’ I’d be licking my chops watching that fight, because ‘you really didn’t want to engage. You didn’t want do anything with this guy [De Los Santos], and this guy isn’t on my level. So imagine you getting in there with me, Tank Davis,'” said Hitchins.
“He’s [Shakur] going to have bigger fights before he gets to the Tank fight. He’ll be like, ‘I told y’all that night I wasn’t feeling good,’ then it probably won’t play into his head. We don’t know. We just have to see.”
For Shakur to redeem himself after his latest poor performance against De Los Santos, he’ll need to beat some very good fighters. The problem is, that none of the top contenders or champions will want to fight Shakur after the way he fought.
They won’t have to chase him and then get the business from the judges like De Los Santos did. In a dream world, Top Rank will be able to set Shakur up with fights against these guys, and he’ll beat all of them to redeem himself and become a PPV star to earn a fight with Tank:
Teofimo Lopez
Devin Haney
Ryan Garcia
Regis Prograis
Subiel Matias
Vasily Lomachenko
Frank Martin
Raymond Muratalla
William Zepeda
“Right now, Tank is licking his chops, but in the next few months, he’d be like, ‘Was he f**** up that night?’ We don’t know. Tank is a special talent. He has everything. The only person that can beat Tank is Tank,” said Hitchins.
Richardson has got it dead wrong about Tank. He’s not thinking about fighting Shakur for these reasons:
- He can’t sell tickets
- Not a PPV attraction and likely never will
- Too much of a runner & clincher
