Hagler was never hidden
“Why didn’t anyone tell me that Marvin Hagler was so cold,” Stevenson wrote X. He praised Hagler’s jab, movement, interior work and toughness.
None of that is wrong. Hagler was all of those things. The issue was the tone. Hagler is not a deep cut. He is not a forgotten champion. He is one of the sport’s reference points. For many fans, the shock wasn’t that Stevenson admired him. It was that he sounded unfamiliar to him. That reaction didn’t come out of nowhere.
Earlier this year, Shakur fired Stevenson Sugar Ray Robinson in an interview, call him “buns” and said Robinson didn’t know how to hold his hands up. Stevenson pointed to footage of Robinson taking hooks from Jake LaMotta and questioned the level of opposition Robinson faced.
Those comments stuck. So when Stevenson later sounded stunned by Hagler, fans connected the dots. To them, it seemed less like curiosity and more like shallow engagement with boxing history.
The shoulder roll doesn’t save him
That criticism spills over into how people judge Stevenson in the ring. He uses a Mayweather-style shoulder roll. The attitude looks familiar. The results do not always follow. When Stevenson stands still for a long time, the role becomes easier to work around.
Zepeda went right under it
That was evident in his July fight against William Zepeda at Louis Armstrong Stadium in Queens. Zepeda didn’t try to punch through the guard. He went under it. Right hooks to the ribs. Shots to the stomach. Over and over. The shoulder roll didn’t stop it.
Fans keep saying Stevenson should fight like Hagler if he wants to be more popular. Stand his man. Trade. Make it physical.
Why fighting like Hagler is not simple
That misses the point. Hagler fought like that because he could. He lived in the pocket. He absorbed shots to return them. Stevenson’s entire style exists to avoid that kind of damage. Asking him to fight like Hagler is not a solution. It is a risk.
Praising Marvin Hagler like a recent discovery, after he fired Sugar Ray Robinson earlier this year, reinforces the sense that Stevenson’s relationship with boxing history is shallow and inconsistent. For a fighter that leans so heavily on technical identity and borrowed defense systems, that gap matters. In boxing, ignorance of the past is not charming. It’s a credibility problem.
