RENO, Nevada – Shakur Stevenson brought back memories for Bob Arum as he watched Stevenson’s masterful performance from a ringside seat Saturday night.

The 87-year-old promoter was so impressed by Stevenson’s offensive and defensive skills in his first world title fight, Arum compared the 22-year-old southpaw to one of the best boxers in the history of the sport.

Arum’s company, Top Rank Inc., promoted Mayweather for the first nine years of the undefeated future Hall-of-Famer’s storied career. Top Rank signed Stevenson after the Newark, New Jersey, native won a silver medal at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

Stevenson won his first world title, the WBO featherweight crown, in just his 13th professional fight Saturday night at Reno-Sparks Convention Center.

The skillful Stevenson (13-0, 7 KOs) masterfully out-boxed Joet Gonzalez and easily won a unanimous decision. Stevenson won 11 of the 12 rounds according to all three judges, each of whom scored their fight 119-109 for him.

Stevenson was so elusive defensively, CompuBox credited Gonzalez for landing only 53-of-494 punches overall in 12 rounds (10.7 percent). CompuBox counted 121-of-510 connections overall for Stevenson (23.7 percent).

Terence Crawford, who’s a mentor to Stevenson, isn’t nearly as prone to hyperbole as Arum. But the unbeaten WBO welterweight champion was very impressed by Stevenson’s performance, too.

“It was a good execution by Shakur,” Crawford told BoxingScene.com. “He did everything he needed to do to make it look easy in there. But it wasn’t, by no means, easy in there. He just showed that it’s levels to the game, that, you know, he’s on a higher level.”

Crawford wasn’t the least bit surprised, though, that Stevenson out-classed Gonzalez in a fight that was mandated by the WBO once Oscar Valdez vacated its featherweight title nearly three months ago.

“He’s grew tremendously,” Crawford said. “He’s getting stronger. He’s getting wiser. He’s getting more sharper. He’s getting more comfortable in the ring. When I first sparred Shakur, he was just a little kid. You know? And now, we sparring, he’s learning so much in the ring by just sparring me, you know, he’s trying things on me that I do on him on me now. And I look at it and I say, ‘OK, well, he’s not just sparring me now. He’s picking up little bits and pieces of things that I do inside the ring.’ And he utilized it in his arsenal tonight.”

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