WBC lightweight champion Shakur Stevenson (24-0, 11 KOs) successfully defended his title with a 10-round unanimous decision over his mandatory William Zepeda (33-1, 27 KOs) in a fight that is being criticized by fans for the oddball set of scores turned in by the judging crew at the Louis Armstrong Stadium in Queens, New York.
The judges scored the fight as a blowout win for Shakur. This was actually a close fight with Zepeda outworking a stationary Stevenson in every round. The judges’ scores were 118-110, 118-110, and 119-109. Those scores didn’t match the fight. It was like another fight, not this one.
It appears that the judges ignored the high percentage of body shots that Zepeda landed, and chose to only score head shots, the ones that Shakur connected with. If you look at it from that angle, the judges’ scores made sense. They’re supposed to factor body shots when scoring fights. Tonight, they didn’t.
Stevenson spent much of the fight with his back against the ropes, leaning away from the punches that Zepeda threw to his head. However, he didn’t block the body shots, which landed cleanly to his midsection and chest. With Shakur’s entire focus on avoiding getting his to the head, he left his body open, and Zepeda took advantage of the situation to land at will.
In the third, Zepeda hurt Shakur with a right to the head, causing him to come close to going down. He clearly lost his composure at that point and was tagged by repeated shots from Zepeda. Interestingly, after the fight, Stevenson denied being hurt, saying he slipped. That wasn’t what occurred. He was hurt, and his lips were bleeding.
In the second half of the fight, Zepeda continued to outwork Shakur, connecting with shots, walking through the occasional odd shot here and there from him. In the 11th and 12th, Stevenson got on his bike and moved around to avoid taking more punishment. He’d taken too much and was no longer willing to stand in the pocket.
Overall, it was a poor performance by Shakur, and I saw him losing the fight.
