Undefeated super featherweight Shakur ‘Fearless’ Stevenson 15-0 (8) is promising a dominant performance when he takes on Jeremiah ‘Low Key’ Nakathila 21-1 (17) at Virgin Hotels in Las Vegas, Nevada on Saturday night.
The fight will be for the interim WBO 130-pound title with the winner in line to face full champion Jamel ‘Semper Fi’ Herring 23-2 (11).
Southpaw Stevenson, 23, moved up to the super featherweight division last year following an impressive run in the 126-pound weight class that saw him claim the vacant WBO strap against Joet Gonzalez 24-1 (14) in Reno in October 2019.
Namibian Nakathila, 31, has won 10 fights by knockout since his lone loss to Evgeny Chuprakov 23-4 (12) by majority decision in Russia more than five years ago.
“With this fight, it’s about the mentality and the mental aspect,” Stevenson said to FightHype. “I feel like I want to mentally break this dude down… And I want to leave him in the ring broken.
“I usually do that to everybody else, but I want to do it worse than it usually is. So that’s what I’m looking to show.”
Stevenson admitted Nakathila will be dangerous, but he said he will be looking to use the visitor’s strengths against himself.
“You got to let fighters like that work against themselves,” he continued. “Like he said, he’s going in there to knock me out. He said I won’t make it past the 11th round.
“With him, he’s going to come in there aggressive, trying to put some heat on me, but he’s going to work against himself.
“I will say that this is a dangerous fight because you don’t know what you’re dealing with.
“You watch the tapes and you see he’s a big puncher and he’s kind of tall, but you don’t know unless you get in the ring.”
Despite a knockout record of just 53%, Stevenson insisted he has the power to do damage to Nakathila.
“I can punch too, so we’ll see. I don’t know. And I got to wait and see,” he said.
“It’s an awkward guy. It’s not as if it’s a normal style that you get ready for. He’s an African-owned heritage fighter, he’s coming in there throwing bombs and you’ve got to be on the top of your game.
“I watched that fight [between Nakathila and Chuprakov] and I think he was doing a lot of holding and I think that was an ugly fight. And I don’t think he did enough. That’s how I feel about it.
“And I watched some of the fight, but I didn’t watch all of it. From what I watched, it looked like he was doing a lot holding, he was gassing out, but he did catch him with some good shots though.
“Like I said, we’ll see what he brings to the table. I usually don’t watch tape, to be honest.
“This fight, I watched three or four rounds at the most. I know it’s a fighter I’ve never seen or heard of. It’s an unknown fighter and I just wanted to see something.
“I got to get an idea of what I’m going in the ring against. Another thing, with all these knockouts, he never really fought anybody.
“You see him in the ring knocking a lot of bums out but you don’t know if he can do that with a real fighter.
“I know he’s training hard and coming in there prepared. I’m also coming in prepared to do what I got to do.”
