WBC lightweight champion Shakur Stevenson (24-0, 11 KOs) surprisingly stood his ground tonight, winning a questionable 12-round unanimous decision over William Zepeda (33-1, 27 KOs) in their co-feature fight at the Louis Armstrong Stadium in Queens, New York.
The scores were 118-110, 118-110, and 119-109. Those scores were disturbingly bad, as they didn’t match the fight that took place tonight. I had the fight for Zepeda by a shutout. This was a classic robbery. It was one of the worst ones I’ve ever seen. Zepeda clearly won the fight. The scoring was beyond horrible.
With Shakur choosing to fight stationary, Zepeda took advantage of it by landing punches to the head and body all night. In the round, he staggered Shakur, almost dropping him with a right to the head. Stevenson’s punch output prevented him from matching all the punches coming forward.
The pressure from Zepeda finally caused Shakur to revert to running in the 10th, and he continued to do so in the final two rounds. The crowd booed his running, but there wasn’t much Stevenson could do. He couldn’t handle Zepeda’s volume punching. He literally had to revert to his Jerry self.
Surprisingly, the judges didn’t give Zepeda for his body shots, and focused more on the headshots that Shakur was landing occasionally.
Punch stats
Shakur Stevenson: 199 of 358 for 56%
William Zepeda: 153 of 501 for 31%
Those stats seemed way off because Zepeda landed a lot more than 153 punches tonight. Those were ridiculously poor stats.
“People thought I got hurt. I threw a jab and was off balance. While I was off balance, he kept throwing. So, it looked like I was hurt,” said Shakur at the post-fight press conference, talking about how he nearly got dropped in the fourth by Zepeda.
Who is Shakur trying to kid? He was clearly hurt by a big right hand that Zepeda nailed him with, which snapped his head back. He was clearly stunned by the shot, but I wouldn’t expect Stevenson to admit what happened. That’s not him.
