Shakur Stevenson brought Josh Padley’s fairytale week to an unhappy end, successfully defending his WBC lightweight title for the second time with a ninth-round stoppage of the late replacement in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

DAZN broadcasted the stacked ‘The Last Crescendo’ card worldwide.

Floyd Schofield’s fight week withdrawal due to illness left event organisers scrambling to find an opponent for the brilliant Stevenson, 23-0 (11 KOs), who is ranked at number four by Ring Magazine.

They eventually settled on Yorkshire’s Padley, 15-1 (4 KOs). The 29 year-old is ranked at number 12 by the WBC and, crucially, was within striking distance of the 135lb weight limit.

Fighters in Padley’s position are often said to have ‘nothing to lose’, a cliché that severely underplays the danger of stepping into the ring with one of the best fighters on the planet without any kind of preparation.

The gifted Stevenson represents a horrible nights work for any lightweight on the planet, let alone a fighter who had been working on site as an electrician just four days earlier.

Padley, 134lbs, is a neat, tidy operator and rather than dispensing with his usual approach and committing to an all or nothing assault, he wisely felt his way into the fight, standing in front of Stevenson and probing away with his jab.

An unhurried Stevenson, 134lbs, popped out his own southpaw jab and weighed up the stranger in front of him. He finally committed to a hard left two minutes into the opener and found his mark.

Stevenson began to recognise patterns and openings and began to put combinations together in the second. Padley struggled to land anything offensively and suddenly began to find himself getting tagged. Stevenson landied a beautiful three punch combination as the round drew to a close and made Padley pay for his own aggression early in the third, hurting him with a left hand.

Stevenson is at his best when he can work off his opponents aggression and as Padley’s comfort level grew and he began to take more risks, he found himself being countered cleanly by Stevenson who also landed the better shots when the two came close.

Still, Padley hadn’t been unduly worried by the time he sat down on his stool after four rounds.

Things got more difficult in the fifth. Stevenson began to use his jab more to open Padley up and capitalised regularly on the resultant gaps. Padley tried to fire back after being hurt by a body shot and struggled to adjust his defences as Stevenson began to put his phases together.

The underdog refused to retreat into his shell. Fighting with more urgency, Stevenson began to dig his toes into the canvas in the sixth, sinking in hooks to head and body and catching Padley with combinations but every time it looked like the Yorkshireman might finally fold, he would retaliate with a brave salvo of his own.

Stevenson gave Padley a lingering look at the end of the sixth and toned down his attack slightly in the seventh, reigning in the combinations and concentrating on his jab and hard, single shots. He hurt his man with a long, hard straight left to the body.

Finally, in the ninth, Padley’s resistance began to wane. Firstly, another well disguised straight left to the body forced him to touch down. A frustrated Padley bounced back and jumped right back into the fray but Stevenson had recognised his route to victory and concentrated on the body. Padley touched down twice more before the rounded ended and his trainer, Jason Cunningham, tossed the towel in and withdrew his fighter as the bell sounded.

Padley appeared totally unfazed by the occasion as he dismantled the favoured Mark Chamberlain on the undercard of Daniel Daniel Dubois’ spectacular victory over Anthony Joshua at Wembley Stadium last September. He handled the occasion well on Saturday but found the technical challenge of facing three weight world champion, Stevenson, an entirely different prospect. He did himself proud and can take only positives from the whole experience.

Stevenson had been hoping to use his appearance on the outstanding card to relight the fuse under his career. The fractious build up to the fight with Floyd Schofield had generated plenty of interest. Instead, his opponent became the story of fight week.

Although the win won’t have made the type of impression he would have hoped for, Stevenson made the most of a bad situation by despatching Padley and will aim to get a big name into the ring next.