The Boxing Truth®

The story leading up to undefeated three-division world champion Shakur Stevenson's bout against Artem Harutyunyan on July 6th was his first title defense as the WBC World Lightweight champion.  Before a hometown crowd, Stevenson put forth a dominant performance, skillfully out Boxing Harutyunyan over twelve rounds to retain his world title.  While this observer summed up what occurred at the Prudential Center in Stevenson's hometown of Newark, NJ,  there is more to the story, which was omitted from the preview penned by yours truly last week, but was not done so as a means of ignoring on my part. It was simply something that I chose to hold off discussing until after the fight. Just what am I referring to? The fact that this fight and what turned out to be the latest successful, lopsided outing for Stevenson, was the final bout under his current promotional agreement with Hall of Fame promoter Bob Arum's Top Rank Inc. Normally, I do my best to try and avoid discussing th...

  With the departure of former Undisputed Lightweight world champion Devin Haney, the period of transition in the 135lb. Lightweight division continues with several world champions in the division looking to make their claim as being the best Lightweight in the world. In recent times both Vasyl Lomachenko and Gervonta Davis have made their respective arguments. Lomachenko emerged as a unified world champion in the division on May 12th with an eleventh round stoppage of IBO world champion George Kambosos in Kambosos’ home country of Australia. Along with the IBO world championship, Lomachenko also gained the vacant IBF crown, emerging as a unified world champion, and in many ways, by default, because he became a unified world champion, became the fighter that all top contenders, other world champions, and would be prospects look to target for a potential fight. The vacant WBO world championship would be decided on May 18th when undefeated top contender Denys Berinchyk scored what ma...