Four days prior to his bout against Shuichiro Yoshino, Shakur Stevenson tweeted “y’all can’t push y’all narrative on me.” The cryptic message, or “subtweet” in modern parlance, could have been interpreted in many ways. High profile boxers such as Stevenson spend their days reading theories about who they might fight next, who they’re afraid of, who they could and could not beat, what they can and cannot do well enough in the ring.
In this case, there was one prevailing message Stevenson seemed to be hearing that was irksome to him, the idea that he had a lack of power and that upon his move up to lightweight beginning with the bout against Yoshino, that deficiency would be even more glaring. His tweet may or may not have been about that specifically, but it sure seemed like it was top of mind for Stevenson, both before and after the fight. His opponent, Yoshino, stoked those flames as well, telling reporters that he didn’t think Stevenson had good power.
“This dude been running around here saying that I don’t have any power. He’s been saying that he’s going to push me mentally. Let’s see if he’s ready to go to deep waters with me. I’m going to drown him,” Stevenson said at the final press conference. “I’m going to beat him up.”
To be fair to Yoshino, he had reason to believe he would be able to absorb what Stevenson would throw at him. Yoshino turned pro at welterweight after spending his amateur career at 140, and had trimmed down into a strong, physical lightweight as a professional. In his two most recent bouts, he battered and bloodied former world champion Masayuki Ito and stopped the generally sturdy Masayoshi Nakatani. Yoshino had been humbling expressing that he “wanted to test his skills internationally” for the past year, suggesting some uncertainty about whether he would ascend to the top levels of 135, but his own durability was never something he had reason to doubt.
In practice, Yoshino was the perfect opponent to help answer questions about Stevenson’s pop. Yoshino is a plodding pressure fighter, one who likes to lean in sometimes over his feet in an eager attempt to engage contact and create exchanges that he feels he will win. In other words, the type of opponent that Stevenson has the skills to simply evade and outbox for twelve rounds. Earlier in his career, as he was settling into his ring identity, that might have been what Stevenson opted to do. It’s what he did against Jeremiah Nakathila in 2021, prompting him to apologize for his performance.
Against Yoshino, particularly in his hometown of Newark, Stevenson clearly didn’t want to have to apologize for anything, and as a result, gave himself the opportunity to show off the punching power he insisted he had plenty of. Moreso than in any of his previous bouts, Stevenson sought to control and remain in the center of the ring, maintaining leverage and posture for throwing power shots at nearly all times. For the less than six rounds that the fight lasted, he ripped Yoshino with hard counter shots, but also took the initiative and threw in combination.
Stevenson scored knockdowns in both the second and fourth rounds, before finally in the sixth round referee Allen Huggins decided the action was too one-sided, too dangerous for Yoshino for it to continue. In speaking with media members ringside, Stevenson offered some insight into how he had found the middle ground between pure never-get-hit boxing sensibilities and outright recklessness in pursuit of a knockout.
“I sensed I was beating him up, but I was trying to tell myself, ‘Stay patient.’ Because I’ll wing shots, but I’m missing, so I’m like, ‘OK, I ain’t gonna keep missing. I’m gonna start making sure every shot counts,’” said Stevenson.
The shots Stevenson referenced missing on were few and far between. In fact, he statistically landed every second shot he threw, connecting at a 50 per cent clip according to CompuBox. In terms of power shots, Stevenson landed 60 per cent of them, 104 of the 174 of them he uncorked.
“He felt my power,” boasted Stevenson. “I sat down on a couple punches and dropped him. Honestly, I wanted the ref to let it go on a little bit longer. I had just caught my second wind. I was going to put him out. Newark’s main name is the Bricks. And tonight, I had bricks in my hands.”
Stevenson didn’t get the cherry on top of the highlight reel violent finish, thanks to some empathetic officiating, something he seemed to lament at least slightly.
“He’d probably do better against somebody else, but he was going against the best in boxing tonight, so you can’t blame him for who he is and for who he was fighting tonight,” said Stevenson. “I was going to sleep him. I was looking for the right shot, and it was going to come. He couldn’t get out of the way of none of those shots. If he wasn’t going to sleep, he was going down.”
Stevenson’s most fervent detractors may not admit to being swayed on the topic of his punching power after this bout, but what’s more telling is the way other high-level fighters are speaking about him. Former world champion Shawn Porter tweeted “that boy (Stevenson) creepin’ into my number one spot for most special fighters,” while undisputed women’s middleweight champion Claressa Shields tweeted “Man (Stevenson) is like Floyd Mayweather to me.”
He now enters a 135-pound division that is perhaps the most commercially interesting in the sport at the moment, completing a foursome of young stars approaching their peaks as fighters and box office draws at the same time. Stevenson, divisional champion Devin Haney, Gervonta Davis and Ryan Garcia are four of the most heavily-discussed fighters of the day. Davis and Garcia will meet later this month, while Haney faces Vasiliy Lomachenko on May 20 with the undisputed title on the line.
As enticing and debate-worthy as any matchup between the aforementioned names would be, Stevenson feels that there won’t be any reason to debate for much longer.
“I think it’s going to be easy work. I think I’m going to smoke him,” Stevenson said of Haney, whom he predicted will defeat Lomachenko, opening a door for a matchup between them. “I think I’m going to shock everybody by smokin’ him, making it a real easy fight. People be like, ‘Damn, you is who you say you is.'”
Corey Erdman is a boxing writer and commentator based in Toronto, ON, Canada. Follow him on Twitter @corey_erdman