Bad Left Hook put the question to its writers this week: who looks worse after the split, Zuffa Boxing or Shakur Stevenson? It’s the kind of argument that fills a gym office after the last class lets out, and my answer is Stevenson. The evidence piled up in roughly 72 hours, and almost none of it came from his own camp.
Stevenson walked away from Zuffa after a public purse standoff, and he’s now working to lock in his next title defense on his own terms. The trouble is that the terms are being written by other people.
The fight that went somewhere else
Start with Devin Haney. MMA Mania, citing Ring Magazine, reported that Haney will face Liam Paro on Dec. 19 in San Francisco, a welterweight unification between Haney’s WBO belt and Paro’s IBF title. Haney (33-0-1, 15 knockouts) had been in talks with Stevenson before those negotiations stalled once again, and he turned to Paro just a few days after signing with DAZN.
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Paro is no consolation prize. He’s 28-1, coming off a win over Lewis Crocker that gave him the IBF title and stretched his streak to three. His only loss came against Richardson Hitchins in December 2024. Haney hasn’t fought since he beat Brian Norman Jr. almost a year ago, so he had every reason to want a date on the calendar, and he got one without Stevenson.
My read is simple. When the most natural opponent of your career signs a new promotional deal and books somebody else within days, it tells you how much patience the market has for your negotiating style right now. Haney found a meaningful unification without Stevenson, and that’s the kind of storyline a fighter never wants written about him.
The sanctioning body steps in
Then came the WBO. On Oct. 26, MiddleEasy relayed a Dan Rafael report that Top Rank had asked the WBO to give Raymond Muratalla mandatory status against Stevenson, and the outlet was careful to note it was a request, with no fight or order confirmed. By the next day it was an order. The WBO told Stevenson and Muratalla to negotiate by Nov. 16, with purse bids available if their sides can’t agree.
Sit with the irony of that for a second. A champion whose last promotional relationship ended over a purse may now have his next one decided by a bidding process, with a Top Rank fighter across the table and a deadline he didn’t choose. Leverage in boxing usually belongs to whoever can afford to wait. Stevenson set out to find a better deal and instead landed on a sanctioning body’s clock.
Foster lands a clean shot
O’Shaquie Foster added his own jab, and it stung more than either business story. Responding to Stevenson’s complaint that Foster never gives him his credit, Foster told Ariel Helwani that he has always called Stevenson a great fighter. Then he got to the point.
“We kept asking for him. We didn’t hear nothing. We held out for a little bit, and we didn’t hear nothing,” Foster said, in remarks Helwani posted on X.
He went further: “Everybody ain’t gonna be bending and breaking the rules and doing all this, man. It’s the fight game. Take it or leave it.”
Foster is selling a fight, obviously. Still, his version of events (a contender waiting by the phone, hearing silence) lines up a little too neatly with Haney’s camp moving on. Two separate fighters, in the same week, describing the same frustration is a pattern, and patterns are how reputations harden.
Why Zuffa gets off lighter
Zuffa didn’t come through clean. Losing a reigning champion is embarrassing for a young boxing outfit, and when MMA Fighting’s Morning Report lists Dana White explaining why Stevenson was released so quickly, you’re reading a promotion playing defense. Nobody explains a release that went smoothly.
But a promotion’s bad week fades. It keeps booking cards, and the next signing pushes the last departure off the front page. A fighter’s prime doesn’t renew like that. Every month Stevenson spends in negotiation is a month without a defense, and the names that made sense for him are getting claimed. Haney is gone until at least December. Foster is talking like a man who has stopped waiting. Muratalla arrives with Top Rank’s backing and the WBO’s paperwork.
Stevenson can still win this argument, and the fastest way is the old one: take the Muratalla fight, beat him, and make the money conversation easier from a position of strength. Anything else hands Foster another quote.
The first real test arrives on Nov. 16. Either Stevenson’s team and Muratalla’s reach terms, or the purse goes to bid and Stevenson finds out what the open market thinks he’s worth.
