Shakur Stevenson, “Don’t count Haney out”

Devin Haney’s fight against Yuriorkis Gamboa (30-4, 18 KOs), which took place last week, was expected to be a blitzing knockout victory for Haney. According to a minority of fans, Haney failed to deliver the punch, those fans were waiting for.

A minority of Devin Haney’s fans were expected a more spectacular finish between Haney (25-0, 15 KOs) and Yuriorkis Gamboa last week. There were hoping for Haney to finish his 38 years old opponent in a dominating style instead of going to the distance and win “only” by unanimous decision against the the former IBF, WBA featherweight champion.

As we all know, a certain faction of the boxing community is very strict and incredibly high-demanding.  As a result, certain fans now think that Haney did not look as talented as Gervonta Davis (24-0, 23 KOs), Teofimo Lopez (16-0, 12KOs), and Ryan Garcia (20-0, 17 KOs) while some commentators feel that Haney’s boxing reputation has dropped down with this kind of a performance. According to this group, Devin Haney may not be able to stand against tougher fighters like Gervonta Davis, and Teofimo Lopez.

During a recent interview, Shakur Stevenson (14-0, 8 KOs) stepped into this discussion to silent this part of boxing community who is criticizing the performance of Haney.  The former WBO featherweight champion and undefeated Stevenson highlighted that past performances are not so relevant. In other words, you may come, like Teofimo Lopez and Gervonta Davis, from a previous spectacular performance but still lose the following match since the style and adaptation to the opponent prevails.

Stevenson added that it is impossible to know what strategy Haney may decide to adopt in case of fight against Lopez or Davis. And this decision would be the true game-changer regardless of your previous performance since those fighters are extremely talented as well as versatile and they may be able to deploy different strategic approaches.

Stevenson continued the interview highlighting the importance of never underestimate any top-fighter ever because it could be a profound mistake. Especially, someone like Devin Haney, cannot be “count out”, and his performance against Gamboa was not, in fact, bad at all. According to Stevenson, Haney’s boxing performance was, instead, “good” and the approach was extremely smart taking no risk but still landing impressive punches.