the sanctioning body announced that the lightweight belt was now vacant.<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cIn light of Champion Stevenson now being the reigning WBO Super Lightweight World Champion and consistent with the WBC Rules & Regulations, the WBC has declared vacant its Lightweight World title.<\/p>\n
Many fans and analysts, and Stevenson himself, clearly expected a little more time for him to decide in which division he wanted to compete next.<\/p>\n
The 28-year-old from Newark took the move as a personal insult, and said that his close association with Terence Crawford \u2014 who was stripped of his WBC super-middleweight strap due to not paying sanctioning fees just days before his retirement \u2014 has affected the decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I just paid these dudes after my last fight\u2026 What the hell [am I] giving y\u2019all 100k right now for? Because y\u2019all got beef with Bud so come at me for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c100k to some crooks who don\u2019t deserve it? Nah Leilani I rather give it to you baby girl\u2026 The WBC didn\u2019t even have s\u2013t to do with this fight and it\u2019s eating them alive. Take your belt it don\u2019t make me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having been brought into the debate, Crawford then responded on Instagram, first addressing the sanctioning body and then Stevenson.<\/p>\n
\u201cWBC \u2013 ain\u2019t no way y\u2019all are still this mad. It\u2019s cool, bro, the Ring belt was FREE.\u201d<\/p>\n
The WBC is yet to comment on the response from its former champion, Stevenson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shakur Stevenson has been relieved of his WBC Lightweight World title days after he won the WBO belt…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":455182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-455181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=455181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/455182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}