Shakur Stevenson should provide entertainment in 2-fight deal with Matchroom

Promoter Eddie Hearn believes he has signed a potentially “unsurpassed” future “world star” with his recent addition of Shakur Stevenson to his Matchroom promotion.

High pressure auditions

With Hearn having overrated Shakur, it puts him in a high-pressure situation for his October 12 bout for the promoter against former IBF super featherweight champion Joe Cordina. For a fighter like Shakur, who has repeatedly underperformed in his last three fights, Hearn puts him in a tough position where he has to try and live up to the hype.

2016 Olympic silver medalist Shakur has signed a two-fight deal with Hearn, which clearly means he will need to impress in order to be signed to a lucrative long-term deal. These two first fights will be auditions for Shakur, where he will have to perform entertainingly.

Stevenson will probably lose one of the two fights, and Hearn will wash his hands of him and realize that he is not who he thought he was. He has a good amateur style, but it is only effective against non-punchers.

We saw his limitations when he fought sluggers Edwin De Los Santos and Jeremiah Nakathila. Stevenson was forced to run all night in those contests and was loudly booed by the fans for his failure to stand and fight.

Shakur is not an entertaining fighter unless he is matched up against a slower, weaker opponent, such as when he fought Jamel Herring and Shuichiro Yoshino.

Unfavorable Matchups

• Joe Cordina: A gimmick for Shakur’s first of his twp fight deal with Matchroom.
• William Zepeda: This is the fight where the wheels could come off for Shakur, as he has a fighter with a high-pressure style that he has always struggled against. Shakur won’t be able to stand and fight Zepeda like he did his last opponent, Artem Harutyunyan, because he has too much power and throws too many shots. It’s possible Shakur will get beat and be in the same boat as Devin Haney.

Shakur faces Joe Cordina on October 12, with them fighting on the undercard of Artur Beterbiev vs. Dmitry Bivol in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Cordina, 32, won’t do much to boost Shakur’s popularity, no matter how good he looks in this fight. Former IBF super featherweight champion Cordina (17-1, 9 KOs) lost his last fight to 35-year-old Anthony Cacace with an eighth-round knockout on May 18.

If the idea was to match Shakur against a British fighter from the 130-lb division, Hearn should have used Cacace instead of Cordina. It still wouldn’t make sense if the goal is to turn Shakur into a world star,” but at least he’ll be facing someone who’s coming off a win instead of a knockout loss.

“I know how good this kid is. He may be unbeatable. I know he’s a pound-for-pound star,” Eddie Hearn told the Matchroom Boxing YouTube channel, glassing Shakur Stevenson’s potential. “There’s something about Shakur’s mentality that gives me confidence that he can beat everybody.

“I think he’s massively undersold and should be not just an American superstar, but a global superstar,” Hearn said of Shakur.

Hearn sees something in WBC lightweight champion Shakur (22-0, 10 KOs) that suggests he is on the brink of stardom and believes he can bring it out. I don’t think he can. Shakur is too limited as a fighter and goes out of his way not to trade with his opponents.

Hearn would look like a genius if he could turn Shakur into the second coming of Floyd Mayweather Jr, but that doesn’t seem likely. Floyd was entertaining right out of the gate when he turned pro. He only got boring later in his career when he got old and adopted the safety-first style that Shakur uses today.

His hit-and-run style doesn’t work for building a “global star” or even a local, national one in the US. If Shakur was must-see TV, Top Rank would never have let him get away. They would have paid him a gold mine to stay, but they didn’t; the reason is obvious. He’s boring, and fans don’t want to watch him.