Abdullah Mason is one victory away from standing as a world lightweight titleholder at the tender age of 21.
“Boxing gets to gain its new favorite young talent, and I’m going to be dominating the lightweight division from Saturday night on forward,” Cleveland’s Mason, 19-0 (17 KOs), said at Thursday’s news conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, while hyping the four-title-fight card he opens on DAZN versus England’s Sam Noakes, 17-0 (15 KOs).
Mason saw the door open to this possibility when US Olympic silver medalist Keyshawn Davis came in significantly overweight at his title defense earlier this year, scrapping the bout and sending Davis defecting to 140lbs, leaving the WBO to set Mason-Noakes as the new title fight.
The swift rise could allow Mason to replace his Top Rank banner mate Xander Zayas as boxing’s youngest world titleholder, a rapid ascension that Top Rank’s Hall of Fame matchmaker Brad Goodman said he foresaw with the signing of Mason.
“Yeah, we knew from Day 1 he would get to this level. He’s very advanced for somebody at this age, and the time is now,” Goodman told BoxingScene. “Amateur credentials, the sparring with top-notch guys, taking it real, real serious. Boxing is everything to him. Nothing else matters.”
Goodman has witnessed so many fighters who have been on the fast track before, including five-division champion Terence Crawford, Zayas, Teofimo Lopez Jnr and Shakur Stevenson.
“I don’t know who I’d compare him with, but he’s proven right away he can compete with the top-notch guys,” Goodman said. “He has a mixture of Crawford, Shakur … the whole package, and now it all remains to be seen if it can all come out on Saturday night.”
At 28, Noakes has the benefit of being fully matured with developed strength. His awkward style could cause problems for Mason, but Goodman is not buying the fight-week concerns that Mason is “chinny” because of the two first-round knockdowns he suffered in a second-round knockout of Yohan Vasquez one year ago this month.
“He’s not chinny, he got careless in that fight and learned from that mistake. … We’re going to see how Abdullah is going to be able to handle it,” Goodman said. “Abdullah is the better fighter overall, but sometimes that doesn’t win fights. The physicality, and we have to see how he reacts to his toughest fight to date.”
Goodman has maintained contact with Mason through training camp, up to the moment the fighter headed to the airport for the trip to the Middle East.
“Go out there, be yourself. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime, something you’ve been fighting for, and here it is,” Goodman told Mason.
The placement on this card that includes title defenses by junior bantamweight Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez, welterweight Brian Norman Jnr versus two-division champion Devin Haney and by unbeaten WBC light heavyweight belt holder David Benavidez gives Mason a platform to capture a significant new group of fans.
“At the end of the day, he has to produce as we all expect him to do,” Goodman said. “There’s just going to be bigger and better things after that. There’s a lot of solid fights out there.”
Among them could be with Top Rank’s IBF lightweight titlist Raymond Muratalla or a move to replace outgoing WBC lightweight belt holder Stevenson as he moves to a WBO 140lbs title fight with Lopez.
Lance Pugmire is BoxingScene’s senior U.S. writer and an assistant producer for ProBox TV. Pugmire has covered boxing since the early 2000s, first at the Los Angeles Times and then at The Athletic and USA Today. He won the Boxing Writers’ Association of America’s Nat Fleischer Award in 2022 for career excellence.
