Abdullah Mason still hasn’t come close to hitting his ceiling.
In the main event of a Top Rank card at Scope Arena in Norfolk, Virginia, on Saturday night, Mason handled veteran Jeremia Nakathila in four rounds to move to 19-0 (17 KOs). The hottest prospect in the lightweight division keeps inching higher without any indication that his peak is near.
Mason-Nakathila was initially slated for the co-main event of the card, but Keyshawn Davis weighed in 4.3lbs overweight for his fight with Edwin De Los Santos on Friday, leading promoter Sampson Lewkowicz to put the kibosh on the bout. Mason, a natural entertainer in the ring, slipped into the headline role easily.
Clad in striking aquamarine, as if to punctuate his explosive power, Mason – a Cleveland resident originally from Bedford, Ohio – began with a darting jab to the body. He landed the stick to the head and body, while Nakathila clocked him with a right to the flank but little else in the opening round.
Mason thumped Namibia’s Nakathila with a hard left in the second round – Nakathila wasn’t hurt, but the sheer force of it sent him stumbling backwards. He was falling for Mason’s feints, fighting twitchy in the worst way.
Mason hurt Nakathila with a series of lefts in the third, to the head and body, sending him stumbling backwards. Nakathila recovered quickly, only for Mason to rock him again in the dying seconds of the round.
The man whom commentator and former two-weight titleholder Timothy Bradley Jnr described to BoxingScene as “an electrifying talent in all of sports” had Nakathila in full retreat in Round 4. Nakathila grabbed on frantically as Mason pressed his attack. The veteran fired a few hard counters that tempted Mason to slow his assault marginally, but his shots didn’t hurt Mason the way Mason’s own hurt Nakathila.
Following the fourth round, the fight was stopped via doctor intervention due to a gash above Nakathila’s left eye. It wasn’t Mason’s most scintillating stoppage, but his offense was as damaging and dynamic as ever, and he took little punishment in return.
When BoxingScene caught up with Mason last week, he was intense and quiet, not particularly worried about the Nakathila fight. He described it as the next step forward in his career – and handled it with ease.
Owen Lewis is a freelance writer with bylines at Defector Media and The Guardian. He is also a writer and editor at BoxingScene. His beats are tennis, boxing, books, travel and anything else that satisfies his meager attention span. He is on Bluesky and can be contacted at owentennis11@gmail.com.