‘I expected to be able to cope better than that’: Hughes reacts to stoppage loss to Zepeda

Maxi Hughes credits William Zepedea’s relentless attacking style after TKO loss.

Immediately following his knockout loss to William Zepeda over the weekend, Maxi Hughes takes time to talk to media members about his experience in the ring and why Zepeda proved to be too much. Here’s some of what he had to say down below.

Hughes on the fight with Zepeda

“He was chipping away, chipping away, and I thought ‘I could check these off, I could check these off,’ and he caught me with one up the middle right in the solar plexus, and that were the one that just sapped it, like drained me and I tried to land a couple back but there were nothing there. So I tip my hat to him. We came ready, I got a good team around me you know, and I respect their decision to pull me out ‘cause I was struggling.”

On how he rates Zepeda after now having faced him

“What impressed me was his work rate. I faced a lot of styles, I faced similar people to him, it was just, you know, it just come down to his boxing. Unfortunately I could’ve caught him with one but he caught me with one of them shots before I had the chance to do it to him.”

On if he could’ve done anything differently

“I tried to create the space and maybe there were times after one or two rounds my corner was saying ‘keep the space, keep him off to me, off to my left.’...I did my best and I come up short.”

On how he thinks Shakur Stevenson would matchup against Zepeda

“It would be good to see if Shakur could keep the distance and keep him off him. Zepeda is — obviously we’ve studied a lot of his fights, they all go that way, he sort of comes forward relentlessly so it would be interesting to see him in with somebody like Shakur or a Lomachenko or Haney.”

On if Zepeda surprised him with anything in their fight

“We expected that, but I just expected to be able to cope with it better than that but as I say, it didn’t go my way. So it was what we expected and it didn’t go my way.”