Shakur Stevenson didn’t take training any less seriously for the huge underdog he’ll fight Tuesday night than he approached preparation for his first world title shot seven months ago.
Stevenson estimates he might’ve sparred even more rounds while getting ready to face Felix Caraballo than he did in advance of his WBO featherweight championship victory over Joet Gonzalez on October 26 in Reno, Nevada. The 22-year-old Stevenson spent most of this training camp in Houston, where he sparred primarily with junior lightweight veteran O’Shaquie Foster.
The skillful southpaw expects his hard work to translate to his “best performance” and a knockout victory. The 2016 Olympic silver medalist has guarded against overlooking the unknown underdog he’ll meet in a 10-round, non-title fight, despite that most Internet sports book list Stevenson (13-0, 7 KOs) as at least a 100-1 favorite versus Caraballo (13-1-2, 9 KOs).
“You’ve still gotta be aware and on top of your game with these kind of guys because they don’t have nothing to lose,” Stevenson told BoxingScene.com. “He’s getting in the ring with nothing to lose, and you don’t know what to expect from him. You don’t know if he’s been training his heart out to come and upset you. You don’t know with these type of guys. So, I’m the type of person, I take these guys super serious. I don’t wanna be in no situation like Anthony Joshua was with [Andy] Ruiz or anybody else, where you’ve got a super underdog and you don’t know what they’re bringing to the ring.
“Then they come to the ring, they upset you, and you’ll be assed out. I don’t wanna be in that situation. I wanna be on top of my game. So, I prepared for this dude like I was preparing for a world-class, top fighter. I don’t know about his step up in competition. What I will tell you is I’m going in there to get him out of there. I watched him fight. I saw a lot of mistakes in one round, so if it’s the same thing from what I’ve seen, I’m going in to get him right out of there.”
ESPN will televise Stevenson-Caraballo as the main event of a six-bout card Tuesday from MGM Grand Conference Center in Las Vegas. The network will air the event in its entirety, beginning at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT.
Stevenson, of Newark, New Jersey, will headline the first televised boxing card in the United States since March 13. Showtime broadcast bouts from Hinckley, Minnesota, that night, just as the COVID-19 pandemic temporarily shut down all professional sports in the U.S.
The 33-year-old Caraballo will fight outside of Puerto Rico for the first time in his six-year pro career. Caraballo accepted this fight on less than one month’s notice, even though he will take a steep step up in competition versus Stevenson, who is widely viewed as an elite talent.
“He’s got an opportunity to upset me,” said Stevenson, who will compete at the junior lightweight limit of 130 pounds for the first time. “For a guy like him, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance, so I think he’s gonna go in there and bank on throwing one of those bolo shots and try to hit me with it. But he’s got another thing coming.”
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
