Boxing star Shakur Stevenson has signed with TKO Group Holdings\u2019 Zuffa Boxing as arguably the biggest name yet to come aboard the venture headed up by combat sports power brokers Dana White and Nick Khan.<\/p>\n
Stevenson\u2019s first opponent in Zuffa colors has not been revealed, but Zuffa will announce Thursday that it has inked Stevenson to a multi-fight agreement in one of the most stark salvos by TKO toward other boxing promoters.<\/p>\n
Hailing from Newark, N.J., Stevenson is one of the biggest stars in American boxing with a pristine 25-0 record including 11 knockouts. He\u2019s worked with several of the sport\u2019s biggest promoters over the years including Top Rank and Matchroom Sport, and he currently holds the 140-pound world championship belts for the WBO and The Ring.<\/p>\n
White has promised to turn Zuffa into the dominant player within boxing, and the industry has been closely watching to see which fighters join the company. English star Conor Benn also joined Zuffa earlier this year in what was its biggest signing before Stevenson.<\/p>\n
Zuffa is supportive of new legislation making its way through Congress that would allow a company to be both promoter and sanctioning body, something that is currently prohibited in boxing.<\/p>\n
In prepared remarks, Dana White called the addition of Stevenson a \u201cmassive signing for Zuffa Boxing,\u201d pointing out that the 29-year-old is \u201cundefeated and already a four-division world champion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zuffa is partially owned by TKO, Saudi power broker Turki Al-Sheikh and the Saudi Public Investment Fund\u2019s Sela entertainment subsidiary.<\/p>\n
In a phone interview with SBJ on Thursday, Stevenson said he signed with Zuffa because he likes to challenge himself with new things. \u201cI\u2019m in the money-getting business — I like to make money and Zuffa got a lot of money to them,\u201d added Stevenson, who said he worked with Khan and White on the negotiations.<\/p>\n
Stevenson listed Devin Haney and Gervonta Davis as possible upcoming opponents. Neither Haney nor Davis are signed with Zuffa, but promoters can work with each other to co-promote fights.<\/p>\n
\u201cI enjoy fighting the best — I want to fight the best of the best and be in big fights, and when I talked to [Zuffa], their vision was the same as mine,\u201d Stevenson said. \u201cWe want to fight the best fights, and here are the big names and we can put these big events together so we\u2019re all aligned with each other and in sync.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Boxing star Shakur Stevenson has signed with TKO Group Holdings\u2019 Zuffa Boxing as arguably the biggest name yet…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":792122,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,1263,82,640],"class_list":["post-792121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-combat-sports","tag-sports","tag-ufc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792121","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=792121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/792122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=792121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=792121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=792121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}