Even Edwin De Los Santos struggled to watch all 12 rounds of his lightweight title fight with Shakur Stevenson.

Whenever the Dominican southpaw attempted to assess what went wrong that night, De Los Santos understood why frustrated fans felt like changing the channel.

“I would watch it,” De Los Santos told The Ring, “and then I would stop halfway.”

The Santo Domingo native anticipates much more action in his second lightweight title fight Saturday night. De Los Santos (16-2, 14 KOs) will fight for the first time in the 18 months since his loss to Stevenson when he challenges Keyshawn Davis (13-0, 9 KOs, 1 NC) for Davis’ WBO lightweight title at Scope Arena in Davis’ hometown of Norfolk, Virginia.

De Los Santos was criticized for not figuring out how to cut off the ring against the elusive Stevenson during their fight for the vacant WBC 135-pound championship in November 2023 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Stevenson’s injured left hand hampered him when he faced De Los Santos, whose ring IQ he questioned during a recent interview with The Ring because Stevenson sensed De Los Santos didn’t try to take advantage of an opponent who essentially competed one-handed.

De Los Santos, of Allentown, Pennsylvania, faulted Stevenson for disappointing viewers throughout a main event ESPN televised.

“He felt my power,” De Los Santos said. “He feared my power. And he had already known that I had power and that I wasn’t exactly an easy fighter to fight with.”

Stevenson defeated De Los Santos unanimously. Judges Tim Cheatham (116-112) and Steve Weisfeld (116-112) scored eight rounds apiece for the three-division champion and David Sutherland credited the 2016 Olympic silver medalist for winning seven rounds (115-113).

The 40 punches De Los Santos landed versus Stevenson, an average of just 3.3 per round, was the lowest total tracked by CompuBox in a 12-round fight since the company launched in 1985. CompuBox counted only 19 power punches for Stevenson and 14 for De Los Santos and neither fighter connected on more than nine punches overall in any round.

De Los Santos doesn’t dispute the official result. He just wishes Stevenson would’ve engaged more than the Newark, New Jersey native did.

“I was surprised because I considered him to be one of the best,” De Los Santos said. “That night wasn’t what I expected and it wasn’t what the people expected.”

Davis, The Ring’s second-ranked lightweight contender, is a 10-1 favorite to retain his WBO belt Saturday night. De Los Santos still figures he’ll have more opportunities to land on the more offensive-minded Davis than he did against Stevenson in another main event ESPN will televise.

The network’s two-bout broadcast is scheduled to start at 10 p.m. ET (3 a.m. GMT) with a 10-round bout between Abdullah Mason (18-0, 16 KOs), a top lightweight contender from Cleveland, and Namibia’s Jeremiah Nakathila (26-4, 21 KOs). The 21-year-old Mason is an even heavier favorite than Davis, 25-1, over Nakathila, who has won three straight fights since suffering back-to-back knockout losses to IBF interim lightweight champ Raymond Muratalla (23-0, 17 KOs) and emerging contender Ernesto “Tito” Mercado (17-0, 16 KOs) in 2023.