Davis watched with pride as his close friend developed into one of the best boxers in the sport over the past few years. Zepeda was dangerous, yet entirely too limited from Davis’ perspective, to give Stevenson difficulty July 12 on “The Ring III” undercard at Louis Armstrong Stadium in Flushing, New York.

The way an unusually aggressive Stevenson went about beating Zepeda bothered Davis, though, so much that he chastised the WBC lightweight champion after his crowd-pleasing performance. Stevenson never seemed affected by even the Mexican southpaw’s flushest punches, but Davis didn’t think one of boxing’s most masterful defensive fighters needed to take so many risks just to appease persistent critics who want the highly skilled southpaw to be more offensive-minded.

Stevenson, who will challenge Teofimo Lopez for his Ring and WBO junior welterweight titles in the main event of “The Ring 6” show Saturday night, defeated Zepeda (33-1, 27 KOs) by huge margins on all three scorecards (119-109, 118-110, 118-110).

“If you want me to be real, I wasn’t surprised at all,” Davis told The Ring about Stevenson’s victory. “The only thing I didn’t like that Shakur did in that fight was try to prove the fans wrong. And he sat there a lot, taking punches and delivering punches, which makes it a fantastic fight. And that’s exactly what it was — a fantastic fight.

“But I told Shakur, ‘Don’t ever do that again. Make people pay. Take everything and give them nothing, period. Don’t sit there and take unnecessary punches. You know damn well you can get out the way of those punches, so do that. Don’t do that ever again.’ And he agreed.”

Lopez should present a much more complicated challenge for Stevenson in what figures to be a more tactical battle between elite-level, 28-year-old champions.

Brooklyn’s Lopez (22-1, 13 KOs) is considered a harder puncher than Stevenson and has boxed six times at the junior welterweight limit of 140 pounds. Each of Lopez’s last five fights have gone the distance, however, a stretch during which Spain’s Sandor Martin and American Jamaine Ortiz troubled him while fighting from southpaw stances.

Stevenson (24-0, 11 KOs), a left-handed fighter from Newark, New Jersey, will make his junior welterweight debut against a former unified lightweight champ. DraftKings lists Stevenson as a 3-1 favorite.

Unlike Lopez, the 2016 Olympic silver medalist hasn’t come remotely close to losing a fight since he turned pro nearly eight years ago. Ranked eighth on The Ring’s pound-for-pound list, Stevenson seeks to become champion in a fourth weight class.

As for Davis (13-0, 9 KOs), the former WBO lightweight champ is set to oppose Ortiz (20-2-1, 10 KOs) on the Lopez-Stevenson undercard. The Norfolk, Virginia, native is a 6-1 favorite over Ortiz, of Worcester, Massachusetts, in their 12-round junior welterweight bout.

DAZN will offer “The Ring 6” to non-subscribers on pay-per-view for $69.99 in the United States and £24.99 in the United Kingdom. The show is included in DAZN’s Ultimate monthly plan for subscribers ($44.99 in the U.S.; £24.99 in the UK).

Keith Idec is a senior writer and columnist for The Ring. He can be reached on X @idecboxing