In his third fight since moving up to the super featherweight division, Shakur Stevenson left with a one-sided unanimous decision victory over Jeremia Nakathila in a WBO title eliminator. With the win, the 23-year-old improved his record to 16-0 with the win.
All three judges scored the fight 120-107 in Stevenson’s favor. The judges have not had him losing a single round in his last three fights and has only lost one of his last 43 rounds.
In October 2019, at just 22-years-old, Shakur Stevenson won his first world title defeating Joet Gonzalez to win the vacant WBO Featherweight title. Rather than opting to stay at featherweight and defend his newly won title, Stevenson instead vacated his title and moved up to super featherweight.
He had two fights in the super featherweight division prior to this bout against not well-known prospects winning each by 6th-round knockout and unanimous decision respectively.
Fighting out of Windhoek, Namibia in South Africa, Jeremia Nakathila came into the bout unbeaten record at 21-0 with 17 wins coming by knockout. This was his second fight not to take place in his native South Africa and his first in the United States.
From start to finish, Stevenson put on a dominant display of tactical boxing. Despite Nakathila having the reach advantage, Stevenson found his way inside mounting his offense against his opponent.
Stevenson frustrated Nakathila with his spectacular defense outlanding him 114-28 in the fight. Nakathila had four rounds in which he only landed one punch and only landed two jabs in 126 attempts all fight.
After having a potential knockdown ruled a slip in the 2nd round, Stevenson was able to score a knockdown in the 4th from a right hook in the corner.
Shakur Stevenson is now the mandatory challenger for WBO Super Featherweight champion Jamel Herring, who was in attendance for the bout. However, Stevenson expressed his desire to face unified champion Oscar Valdez.
“If I had the choice, I’d take Oscar Valdez, but if I have to beat up Jamel [Herring] to get to it, I’ll do that too. Jamel can’t beat me. He knows what it is.”