Former two-time Cruiserweight World Champion, Shawn Porter, has joked that he “doesn’t like” Shakur Stevenson after sharing details of the first time he met the Rio 2016 Olympic silver medallist.
Since beginning his professional career in 2017, Stevenson has gone from strength to strength, dominating each division that he’s competed in.
As a featherweight, ‘Shak’ claimed the WBO title by outpointing Joet Gonzalez in just his thirteenth outing as a pro before moving up to super-featherweight.
In that division he knocked out Jamel Herring to become WBO world champion, before unifying the titles in another one-sided performance against Oscar Valdez where he picked up the WBC and Ring Magazine belts without hardly dropping a round to the previously unbeaten Mexican.
In his next fight, Stevenson’s time as champion was cut short as he was stripped of both belts after missing weight ahead of his defence against Robson Conceicao.
The fight went ahead and Stevenson came out on top and immediately moved up to lightweight – knocking out Shuichiro Yoshino on his 135lb debut and earning him a spot to fight Frank Martin for the vacant WBC title, with current champ Devin Haney set to move up to 140lbs.
Stevenson is well known in the sport for being relentless with training and his career growth, and Porter proved that on the Porter Way Podcast byrevealing that he immediately asked for a spar when they first met.
“I don’t like that dude, man. First time I met him he said ‘yo, are we going to spar?’, I was like ‘damn, let me live a little bit’, he is a beast!”
The two undefeated Americans, Stevenson and Martin will battle it out before the end of the year with the date yet to be confirmed.