Bob Arum has referred to Shakur Stevenson as a left-handed Floyd Mayweather for much of Stevenson’s three-year pro career.

Now that Stevenson has won his first world title in just his 13th professional fight, Arum is convinced that the unbeaten WBO featherweight champion can surpass Mayweather’s accomplishments. His promoter’s praise places plenty of pressure on the 22-year-old Stevenson, as Mayweather is commonly considered the best boxer of this generation and an all-time great.

“Shakur is, I said it when we did our first fight, Shakur Stevenson is a future star in the sport of boxing, a future superstar,” Arum, Mayweather’s former promoter, said during a recent conference call. “I look on him as the southpaw version of Floyd Mayweather, and I think he will exceed the performances by Floyd. I just think he’s a rare, rare talent. And I think that he’s a young man who’s growing in size, and so I think 130 pounds will be a brief stop in his career because he’s growing into a welterweight, and maybe even a junior middleweight.”

Mayweather was 21 when he won his first world title – the WBC 130-pound crown – by beating Genaro Hernandez in October 1998. The Grand Rapids, Michigan, native became a five-weight world champion, retired undefeated (50-0, 27 KOs) and made more money than any boxer in the history of the sport, in excess of $700 million.

Stevenson was 22 when he defeated Joet Gonzalez by unanimous decision to win the then-unclaimed WBO 126-pound championship October 26 in Reno, Nevada. He’ll fight for the first time Tuesday night since he out-pointed Gonzalez (23-1, 14 KOs).

Stevenson, a 2016 Olympic silver medalist from Newark, New Jersey, will oppose Puerto Rico’s Felix Caraballo (13-1-2, 9 KOs) in a 10-round, non-title fight. Caraballo and Stevenson both weighed in at the contracted limit of 130 pounds Monday for a main event ESPN will televise from MGM Grand Conference Center in Las Vegas (7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT).

Though ambitious and confident, the emerging Stevenson realizes he is nowhere near cracking boxing’s pound-for-pound list, let alone approaching Mayweather’s territory.

“It make me feel good, being compared to Floyd because Floyd is like somebody I came up looking after a lot as a kid and as an amateur,” Stevenson said during the newest episode of “Stars And Champions” on Impact Network. “I looked up [to him] as one of my favorite fighters. So, it make me feel good. But at the end of the day, I’m still me, so I’ve gotta create my own path and my own destiny. So, I appreciate all the comparisons. But I’m really the first Shakur Stevenson. And I think that I’m gonna take over and surpass Floyd and be better than what Floyd was. And I’m trying to make as much money as or [even] more money as Floyd did, and all that type of stuff. So, my vision is like I’m looking past that stuff.” 

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.