Ash-Shakur Nafi-Shahid Stevenson vs. Jeremiah Nakathila

Main event Saturday on ESPN. WBO interim super featherweight title at stake. Former amateur star and current undefeated pro Stevenson is ranked #1 and Nakathila, hailing from Namibia with just one major international step-up (an MD loss to Evgeny Chuprakov five years ago) is #2.

 

Just watched Chuprakov vs. Nakathila; messy fight with a dull atmosphere but a few spots where business picked up (and the crowed perked up). It indeed was fairly competitive, but then I never rated Chuprakov as some world beater.

This content is protected

Nak is long, lean and wiry - and seems to have a solid chin. He also, however, throws almost exclusively wide slapping punches that belie yet another African homebody "puncher's record" that doesn't hold up to scrutiny, and he looks neither especially heavy-handed or explosive, nor possessing destructive surgical technique.

I doubt he'll pose too much trouble for Stevenson and is probably not even a lateral step from Toka Kahn Clary for the skilled southpaw.

 

Yep.

 

Funnily enough, despite Chuprakov - then an undefeated prospect - having a modest amount of buzz around him in 2016 (or maybe we all just liked making chupacabra jokes ) apparently nobody on this forum made a RBR for or even mentioned that fight. The only instances of Nakathila on a search for his name before now are - well, me, rattling off a list of WBO contenders a couple of years ago, then a bunch of picks on the Stevenson fight in the last few weeks in Kirk's league.

 

I think between his strength and awkwardness and the pressure Shak has on his shoulders (placed by fans/media to an extent but exacerbated by his own pride) to push for more stoppages in apparent class mismatches ... yeah, there's some banana peel potential. It'd have to be a perfect storm though - somebody with boatloads of poise and amateur experience letting his emotions getting the best of him and making a mistake easing off the defensive brakes to attempt to show off and/or hurt Nakathila (he probably can't) and then a guy with pretty damn low accuracy happening to time something big on the button and then swarm in and keep the throttle on before Stevenson can clear the cobwebs. Could happen, though.