Stevenson demolishes Guevara in three
Shakur Stevenson had his way against late notice opponent Alberto Guevara.
Alberto Guevara took tonight’s ESPN main event on just eight days’ notice, and, well, it showed, as Shakur Stevenson made quick work of him, scoring a third round knockout that may set up a world title shot in his next outing.
Guevara (27-5, 12 KO) is a 28-year-old Mexican fighter who has always been decent but ultimately outclassed at higher levels, and that’s what we got here. He challenged for bantamweight belts in 2012 and 2013, losing convincingly to Leo Santa Cruz and Shinsuke Yamanaka, and was coming into this bout off of a one-sided decision loss to Hugo Ruiz in January.
He had no answers for Stevenson (12-0, 7 KO), who dropped Guevara twice in the second round and then again in the third, with the referee reaching a count of 10 that Guevara could only somewhat convincingly pretend he wanted to beat.
“Y’all gotta get me better competition. I want the world champions,” Stevenson said after the fight, calling out WBO titleholder Oscar Valdez, WBA titleholder Leo Santa Cruz, and IBF titleholder Josh Warrington. He didn’t mention WBC titleholder Gary Russell Jr, which is probably just as well.
Asked if he’d go to England to fight Warrington, Stevenson said he would, mentioning December as a possible date.
Joshua Greer Jr MD-12 Nikolai Potapov
A very controversial decision here. Andre Ward of ESPN had it 115-113 for Potapov, and that was with Ward scoring the last three rounds for Greer, who struggled badly in the first nine rounds of the fight, winning just two on Ward’s card. But Greer (21-1-1, 12 KO) is the Top Rank fighter, and he got the scores, 114-114, 115-113, and 116-112, the last of which is really, really badly stretching things. This was also an IBF eliminator, so Greer’s in line for a shot at that belt, currently held by Naoya Inoue. Potapov (20-2-1, 11 KO) was of course incredibly displeased and disappointed about the result. Greer, while being booed, did a corny post-fight promo where he awkwardly delivered some rehearsed lines, such as, “You’re gonna call me the Black Rocky because I beat the brakes off a Russian,” which probably sounded better in the mirror last Friday.