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By Sean Jones: Shakur Stevenson (says he’s going to stay at 130 until he finishes collecting all the belts to become undisputed super featherweight champion after soundly defeating WBC champion Oscar Valdez (30-1, 23 KOs) by a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision last Saturday night. The judges’ scores: 118-109, 118-109, and 117-110.
Fighting in front of a large crowd at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Stevenson (18-0, 9 KOs) utilized his superior boxing skills to shut down the offense of former two-division world champion Valdez to just a trickle.
Why did Valdez stick with his high guard?
Valdez’s decision to use the Canelo Alvarez high guard to try and plod his way into punching range against Shakur was a major blunder on his part because it was never going to work.
The ONLY reason Canelo has gotten away with walking down opponents using a high guard is that he’s been fighting flawed paper champions in the last two years, fighters that were so inept that they lacked the talent to move away from him when he’d plod forward.
Trainer Eddy Reynoso should have had a better plan for Valdez than to have him slowly coming forward behind high guard because that was never going to work.
With Valdez fighting like a journeyman-level fighter with no plan B or plan C, Stevenson picked him apart, making it look easy.
It’s just shocking that Reynoso didn’t have a backup plan in place for Valdez to use when his simplistic Canelo-esque high guard walk down plan failed to work against Stevenson.
With Valdez’s amateur experience fighting twice in the Olympics, he should have made adjustments on the fly, even if his trainer Reynoso had no ideas spinning around in his head.
“He got defeated, but he didn’t get whitewashed to the point where he didn’t do anything in the fight,” said Jeff Mayweather to Fight Hub TV on his view of Oscar Valdez in his performance in losing to Shakur Stevenson.
“He [Valdez] did well in the fight as well,” Mayweather continued. “I just think he has to go back to the drawing board.
“Now, I think Shakur is probably going to be moving out of that weight class, so maybe he [Valdez] needs to stay there and recapture the crown again.
“I think he [Shakur] should clean up the [130-lb] division, and then move up [to 135]. He gave a great performance, boxed real slick, hardly got hit that much, and did exactly what he said he was going to do.
“Like I said, he’s [Valdez] is a volume puncher, he throws a lot of punches, and he missed a whole lot of punches. So, if he landed 100 punches, he probably missed 300.
“I would give him a B+,” said Jeff on his grade for Shakur after his lopsided 12-round unanimous decision over Valdez. “He’s a very smart young man, and as he goes up, he’ll still do better,” Mayweather said of Stevenson.
“He’ll still do good, even at the next weight class, I think so.”
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