Oscar De La Hoya on Zepeda’s Loss to Stevenson: “Scores Were Off”

Promoter Oscar De La Hoya says he believed “the scores were off” for his fighter William Zepeda’s 12-round unanimous decision loss to WBC lightweight champion Shakur Stevenson (24-0, 11 KOs) last Saturday night in Queens, New York. De La Hoya still believes Shakur fought well enough to deserve the victory.

Why Scores Felt Off?

Oscar noted that Zepeda (33-1, 27 KOs) got the better of the action in the first half of the fight, but then Shakur came on in the second half. De La Hoya didn’t give his thoughts on how he scored the fight.

Many fans felt that Zepeda had done enough to win all of the first six rounds. The way the judges scored the fight, they focused on headshots and ignored Zepeda’s bodywork and volume punching. It’s how judges are trained. Many of them tune out body punching entirely and watch for headshots only.

“It was a good fight. The scores were off, but Shakur did his thing. The first half was Zepeda. The second half was Shakur. You have to give it up to him,” said Eddie Hearn to Fight Hub, reacting to his fighter, William Zepeda, losing to Shakur Stevenson last Saturday night.

“It was back and forth. It was a great show. It’s back to the drawing board, but one loss is nothing. One loss to a really good fighter like Shakur doesn’t mean anything. You bounce back from it. That’s what boxing is,” De La Hoya said about Zepeda.

De La Hoya fails to mention that the flaws that Zepeda showed against Shakur were similar to what he’d shown in his two razor-close fights against Tevin Farmer. Zepeda gets hit a lot with headshots that land clean and impress the judges.

 What Were Zepeda’s Fight Flaws?

1. Easy to hit with headshots
2. Focusing too much on body punching: The judges don’t score punches to the body the way they do with headshots. They tend to ignore body punching when scoring rounds unless a fighter is visibly hurt.
3. Not enough power on volume shots: Zepeda’s power isn’t good enough with his high-output attacks to outweight the judge-pleasing headshots from fighters like Shakur and Farmer.

“He [Zepeda] threw a lot more punches, but the one thing about Shakur is the punches he lands, they’re very effective. So, those are great for the scoring. I think overall, it was a good fight. It was another great experience for Zepeda. You grow and learn. That’s it,” said De La Hoya.

Where Zepeda failed was staying close enough to Stevenson to reach his head with his punches. Many of ‘El Camaron’ Zepeda’s shots were coming up short because Shakur was leaning backwards much of the time. William could have remedied this problem by getting closer before targeting the head.

Another problem that Zepeda had was Shakur’s holding. He didn’t fight through the clinches like other fighters do, who are trained to deal with guys who hold. Zepeda meekly allowed Stevenson to tie him up rather than wrestling free or hitting him while being held. He could have done either of these things. That’s a training issue for Zepeda.