The building will be empty. But Shakur Stevenson’s future is not.
Stevenson will make his first featherweight title defense against Miguel Marriaga on Saturday night at Hulu Theater at New York’s Madison Square Garden in front of empty seats because of the growing coronavirus threat.
Essentially, it’ll be a studio show for an ESPN audience. It’ll be different. It’ll be weird. Echoes instead of cheers, yet life and boxing careers move on. Nothing about Stevenson’s ambition changes, especially in a title defense that allows him to make a statement against Marriaga, a perennial title contender.
Before Stevenson (13-0, 7 KO) won his first 126-pound belt with a dominating decision over Joet Gonzalez last October in Reno, Nevada, he talked about 2020 as a year when he could begin to stake a claim on pound-for-pound contention.
“I want to be the king of boxing,’’ Stevenson, 22, told reporters this week on a promotional stop in his hometown of Newark.
He won’t necessarily do that against Marriaga (29-3, 25 KOs). Stevenson is heavily favored. He is expected to win. But he has his own expectations. He’ll measure himself more by how he does than what he does. He’s hoping for a sensational performance, one that won’t get a crowd rocking, yet will be YouTube worthy. Fans can’t be there, but Stevenson wants to deliver a victory memorable enough to replay and share.
Marriaga is 0-3 in title shots. He lost to Nicholas Walters in June 2015, Oscar Valdez Jr. in May 2017 and Vasiliy Lomachenko in August 2017. Lomachenko, No. 1 in Boxing Junkie’s pound-for-pound poll, destroyed Marriaga, knocking down the 33-year-old Colombian twice and forcing him to quit after the seventh round of a junior lightweight fight.
For Stevenson, Lomachenko’s performance is the standard, one he hopes to surpass. Do that and maybe he gets some consideration from some of those pound-for-pound polls.
More immediate is a possible title unification fight with U.K. featherweight Josh Warrington (30-0, 7 KOs). Stevenson hopes to face Warrington in May. That might be a little bit early, but nobody ever became king by waiting around.