{"id":796002,"date":"2026-07-12T18:48:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T18:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/796002\/"},"modified":"2026-07-12T18:48:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T18:48:08","slug":"hall-of-famer-accuses-shakur-stevenson-of-purposefully-going-missing-after-devin-haney-agreed-to-catchweight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/796002\/","title":{"rendered":"Hall of Famer accuses Shakur Stevenson of ‘purposefully going missing’ after Devin Haney agreed to catchweight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shakur Stevenson<\/a> is deemed by many to be one of boxing\u2019s top pound-for-pound fighters, but one Hall of Fame inductee believes that Stevenson, who is usually keen for opportunities to enhance his legacy, is in the wrong for purposefully swerving a showdown with Devin Haney<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Stevenson became a four-division world champion back in January, dominating Teofimo Lopez to capture the WBO super-lightweight world title<\/a>. Since then, the Newark southpaw has been linked to a clash with welterweight ruler, Haney, but he has maintained that he would require his fellow American to move down in weight for a catchweight of 144lbs.<\/p>\n

Now that Stevenson has signed with Dana White\u2019s Zuffa Boxing<\/a>, it\u2019s unclear whether that will make a fight with Haney easier or harder to arrange. Instead, \u2018The Dream\u2019 is now expected to face Stevenson\u2019s close friend, Keyshawn Davis, next.<\/p>\n

Speaking on his YouTube channel<\/a>, two-division world champion Tim Bradley stated that he believes Stevenson purposefully avoided a scrap with the WBO welterweight champion, even after Haney agreed to drop to the required catchweight<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cShakur Stevenson, he purposefully went M.I.A., man. He was like, \u2018I think what Roy [Jones Jr.] said, wait until [I am at] 147lbs, Tim said the same thing. However, if you was going to make the fight at 144lbs\u2026 nah, I ain\u2019t going to do it. I\u2019mma let my brother, Keyshawn Davis, go ahead and fight you\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whilst Haney has been ordered to take on Keyshawn Davis, Bradley went on to admit that he understands Haney\u2019s hesitation to proceed with the fight, believing that Haney will be underpaid in a high-risk, low-reward defence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou [Haney] are left with just Keyshawn and I know that you don\u2019t want to do the Keyshawn fight. Hell no, why? Why do the Keyshawn fight? Ooh, it\u2019s a good fight. S**t, I think that it is a lose-lose situation; [if] you beat him, \u2018oh he don\u2019t have no experience\u2019, [if] he beats you, \u2018oh, you ain\u2019t that good.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cIs the money going to be right? I don\u2019t know if the money is going to be right. You are going to make some money but you ain\u2019t going to make the money that you want to make.\u201d<\/p>\n

Haney and Davis\u2019 teams now have just 11 days to reach an agreement, or the fight will go to purse bids. Meanwhile, it remains unclear who Stevenson will face in his Zuffa Boxing debut.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shakur Stevenson is deemed by many to be one of boxing\u2019s top pound-for-pound fighters, but one Hall of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":785554,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":["post-796002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=796002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/785554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}