Eddie Hearn woke up Tuesday and chose violence. A day after Shakur Stevenson announced he’d been released from Zuffa Boxing without throwing a single punch for the promotion, the Matchroom chairman went on iFL TV and spent several minutes ripping Dana White over it.
Hearn said he figured the whole thing was a bit at first. “I thought it was a publicity stunt, to be honest with you,” he said, adding that he only believed it once Stevenson’s team messaged him Monday night. He said his phone lit up with 50 messages within 30 seconds of the news breaking.
Then he went for the history books. “How can you sign your most high-profile fighter and then he leaves you without even fighting? I mean, I don’t think in the history of boxing that has ever happened,” Hearn said. He also took a shot at White’s repeated promise that people should judge Zuffa by its body of work at year’s end, saying Zuffa had made history “by actually signing a fighter and never giving him a fight.”
He closed with a pile of insults, including “Capillary-busting. Blood-pressure-rushing,” and declared that “just 10 months in, it’s all over, Rover.”
How it fell apart
Stevenson is 25-0 and 29 years old. His last fight was a 12-round decision over Teofimo Lopez in January, and he signed with Zuffa Boxing six months later promising the biggest fights available. Per Bloody Elbow, White apparently couldn’t lock down an opponent before the split.
Stevenson’s own account was calm. “I’ve been in camp for like eight weeks for fights that I was told would happen that have not happened,” he said Monday. He said he isn’t mad at anyone or pointing fingers, but that he requested his release, it was granted over the weekend, and “I’m officially a free agent.”
This is the latest round in a feud between Hearn and White that has run all of 2026. Bloody Elbow reports that White has angered Hearn by claiming he’ll promote and produce Tyson Fury vs. Anthony Joshua on December 11, even though he’s contractually barred from involvement in that fight.
Sal’s take
Hearn isn’t a neutral party. He’s a rival promoter, and his entire job this week is to make Zuffa look like a lemonade stand. But the math backs him up here, and that’s what stings. Stevenson signed in the summer, sat through an eight-week camp, and left in October with zero fights. That’s a 25-0 fighter with his best years ahead of him who lost most of a year to a schedule that never got filled. If you’re White, the Fury-Joshua talk gets a lot harder to sell when the biggest name you actually signed walked out without getting a date. And for Stevenson, the market just reopened. The free agent with an unbeaten record and Lopez on his résumé is the one holding the cards, and Hearn already has a message from his team sitting in his phone.
