Shakur Stevenson has shown his support towards Britain’s Maxi Hughes following his controversial and embarrassing scoring efforts by the judges involved in his defeat to former unified lightweight world champion George Kambosos in Oklahoma this past Saturday (July 22).
Despite Hughes boxing the fight of his career to date, which on paper nobody had given him a chance, for many, he did more than enough to claim a victory in his favour with effective counter-punching and, at times, outclassing the former number one rated lightweight in the world.
After twelve rounds, Hughes would drop a majority decision to Kambosos with scorecards reading 114-114, 115-113 & 117-111 in favour of the Australian. Immediately the audience in attendance showed their disapproval towards the judging and Kambosos, who maintained that he did more than enough to win.
“We won the fight by many rounds. That’s no discredit to Maxi Hughes. He had a couple of good rounds. But a couple of good rounds don’t win you the fight. We won the majority of the rounds. That’s the reason we chose him. He was a hard test. A lot of guys coming off losses wouldn’t want to take a test like him. This was a hard challenge,” Kambosos said.
Hughes, on the other hand, was, in his words, “distraught” but remained dignified post-fight with his comments.
“I’m absolutely devastated. Nobody thought I was supposed to be in George’s league. Tonight, I came, and I showed that I should have had my hand raised. I don’t want to take George’s moment.
“I used my footwork. I made him miss and pay. I landed the cleaner shots. I don’t want to sound like a sore loser, and I will watch it and assess it, but everyone here now knows who Maxi Hughes is.”
Stevenson, former unified super-featherweight world champion, did not tone down his opinion of the contest of which he was present ringside. He and Kambosos have a post-fight confrontation in which Stevenson tells Kambosos that he lost his fight with Hughes.
“I thought that it was a robbery, I thought Maxi boxed well, and I thought that he was the better fighter when Stevenson was speaking to Top Rank and ESPN post-fight.
“I think that the judges should be held to a higher criteria, they should be as focussed as the boxers and that they should need a lot more [qualifications] to become a judge.
They’re not watching the fights, they’re not really paying too much attention to the fights, and it’s messing up boxing.”
