NEW YORK — Shakur Stevenson’s decision to split with Zuffa Boxing only months after signing and staging a photo-op with Dana White has left both the fighter and the promotion facing daunting questions over money and ambition. The unbeaten four-division champion, 25-0 (11 KOs), has not fought since his impressive unanimous-decision victory over three-division champion Teofimo Lopez on 31 January at Madison Square Garden, with finances and dragged-out talks threatening to extend that absence.
In conversations with boxing insiders familiar with the split, the sides grew dismayed with each other after initial talks for a super-fight with unbeaten WBO welterweight champion Devin Haney were derailed. Stevenson and Zuffa then moved towards a generational pound-for-pound meeting with recent welterweight title challenger Manny Pacquiao at 147lbs that might have featured on the 11 December Anthony Joshua-Tyson Fury card on Netflix from Cardiff, Wales. Zuffa took Stevenson’s willingness to meet Pacquiao at welterweight — so soon after winning the WBO 140lbs title from Lopez — as a sign the 2016 U.S. Olympic silver medallist from Newark, New Jersey, would campaign at welterweight, but the power-that-be — a role Saudi financier Turki Alalshikh, who holds a 60 per cent ownership reach in Zuffa Boxing, has boasted of holding — rejected paying eight-figure purses to both co-main event fighters on an already expensive card. Pacquiao, by the way, remains in contention for a spot on the Joshua-Fury card.
That denial turned Zuffa’s attention back to Haney, the three-division champion from Las Vegas, but talks bickered over Stevenson’s requests to stage the bout at a catchweight of 144 and then 145lbs and to impose a fight-day rehydration limit, which Haney and his manager father did not want to accept. While Zuffa officials wondered why Stevenson was dug in on the lower weight for Haney when he had not been for Pacquiao, the Stevenson side languished in training camp waiting for funding to materialise. Disenchantment grew despite Alalshikh’s seemingly unlimited bankroll and White’s touts of a major splash in Zuffa Boxing’s first year, particularly after Zuffa Boxing paid Conor Benn $15 million to fight aged Regis Prograis earlier this year and missed a golden public relations opportunity to stage a mega-fight in late November after White’s failed takeover attempt to move Joshua-Fury to Madison Square Garden. As Sports Illustrated’s Chris Mannix reported, Zuffa were further hamstrung by early claims they did not need to work with other promoters, even though the best options beyond Haney were Top Rank’s recent lightweight champion Raymond Muratalla and Premier Boxing Champions’ WBA 140lbs champion Gary Antuanne Russell, whose brother-trainer claimed he was low-balled beneath a $2 million figure floated in a news report.
With no Zuffa signing bonus delivered to Stevenson, his handlers proposed an escape plan that Zuffa were pleased to provide, believing the 29-year-old still has work to do before becoming a can’t-miss draw. Stevenson said on a YouTube post announcing his release that he “wasn’t mad at anyone, and that he understands the boxing business.” An individual close to Zuffa Boxing said that while the industry ridicule of releasing a fighter before he even entered the ring for the promotion is embarrassing, the business sense of the move trumps the P.R. hit. Still lingering is whether Zuffa have the stomach to consistently fund major fights after years of White being bashed and sued for paying his UFC fighters minimally.
Stevenson is now forming his own promotional company and will likely explore marquee bouts at 140lbs and lightweight until he feels fully ready for a move to 147 and dates with Haney and WBC champion Ryan Garcia as he has said he wants. With Zuffa no longer in play, that forces him to revisit DAZN, which streams Top Rank, PBC, Matchroom, Golden Boy and Queensberry fights, where the prevailing phrase now circling is clear: today’s market is not yesterday’s market.