Stevenson Decisions Nakathila To Stay Undefeated

Shakur Stevenson said before the bell he wouldn’t lose to the law and came through to defeat Jeremiah Nakathila at the Virgin Hotels Las Vegas Saturday night to remain undefeated by unanimous decision.

The official scorecards were easily 120-107 x 3 for Stevenson in a contest, that if you missed it, you missed nothing.

The WBO interim title at 130 pounds was on the line in this contest as the winner would have a shot at current titleholder Jamel Herring who was on hand at the fight tonight.

Once the bell rang on the main event that aired on ESPN and ESPN+ in the US and on Sky Sports in the United Kingdom, Nakathila was clearly the rangier fighter with the bigger frame and torso but was suspect to body shots from Stevenson which would be his focus in the second round of this contest.  Stevenson was looking in the early on wait for Nakathila to throw before countering.

There was a knockdown in the second-round replay that landed a clean punch on Nakathila. It looked like Nakathila had no answers for Stevensonalso no chance to land a punch on him. How little has Nakathila been able to land? He was only at 7% of punches landed after three rounds.

Stevenson landed a right hook landed on Nakathila to close out the fourth round that grazed him enough to send him down. Nakathila was able to beat the count but you can see that the talent gap and why Stevenson was a huge favorite going into the bout. The knockdown was the first of his career and the broadcast mentioned that Nakathila told them before the fight “no and it never will”. That was proven false after the fourth-round bell.

Blink and you'll miss it. 😳@ShakurStevenson catches Nakathila with a lightning right hook & puts him on the canvas to close out Round 4.#StevensonNakathila | LIVE on ESPN & ESPN+ pic.twitter.com/372cuB0SQT

— Top Rank Boxing (@trboxing) June 13, 2021

Once the fifth round started, this fight seemed academic as there wasn’t much Nakathila can do or make any adjustments because he’s never been in the ring with this level of competition. This fight was the definition of one-way traffic. So much so, that before the sixth round started, Nakathila hadn’t landed a jab on Stevenson (0 for 56) and was flat-footed to the point he was a stationary target. He did at least land a jab in the sixth round.

By the end of the sixth round, the broadcast analyst Andre Ward kept repeating the mantra, “get him out of here so we can go home early” as the only thing missing in this fight at this point was a knockout. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen and made this target practice pretty redundant from the second half of the battle. Also, the boo birds came out late in the championship rounds in reflection of the lack of action going on.

With Stevenson winning, we will wait and see him take on Herring for the WBO title but this performance was standard Stevenson who looked good making an outmatched opponent miss and counter but felt a little surprising he couldn’t get him out of there over twelve rounds.