By Adam Baskin: Undisputed lightweight champion Devin Haney has offered his WBC mandatory Shakur Stevenson a 25% cut for a fight that would surely be shown on ESPN PPV and would do big numbers.
Shakur (20-0, 10 KOs), who many boxing fans rate as the #1 fighter in the 135-lb division, reports that Haney disappeared after he turned down what he thought was just the initial lowball offer that is normally seen by champions to their challengers.
Haney doesn’t seem to want the Shakur fight, does he? What many people think is Devin wants to swerve Shakur like the plague to avoid a thrashing of the worst kind and is waiting for Gervonta Davis to get out of jail so he can transmute his four lightweight titles into a massive fortune of $15 to 20 million like the one the influencer Ryan Garrcia recently got against Tank.
Instead of Haney (30-0, 15 KOs) coming back with a counteroffer to Shakur, as part of the custom, he’s cut off communication, indicating that he’s moving on. Was Haney’s 25% offer a serious one?
Most fans would agree that this was just trickery on Haney’s part, coming up with a bogus offer so he can have a pretext for moving on towards safer waters to avoid a probable first loss on his inflated 30-0 record.
Nah I’m not gone take 25% but u knew that already Lil bruh be realistic 😴
— Shakur Stevenson (@ShakurStevenson) July 1, 2023
Shakur has earned his title shot to challenge Haney through hard work, beating Shuichiro Yoshino by a sixth round knockout in a WBC 135-lb title eliminator last April.
Stevenson is now the WBC mandatory to Haney’s belt with that organization. So he’s going to have to defend against Shakur or give up the title. Which is it going to be for Haney? Fight or vacate?
Look at it this way. Haney has to have something to tell his fans so they won’t label him a ‘duck’ for circumventing his mandatory requirements to defend against Stevenson.
“I didn’t turn the fight down either. That was supposedly the first offer. I haven’t heard nothing else since,” said Shakur Stevenson on Twitter about the 75-25 offer made to him by undisputed lightweight champion Devin Haney.
No, Shakur didn’t turn down the fight with Haney, but he fails to understand that the offer appears to have been made with the intent for him to reject it. In other words, it likely wasn’t a serious offer made by Haney.
Why should Shakur even bother waiting & hoping for a counteroffer? That’s pretty obvious the 25% offer made to him from Haney wasn’t a serious one and that even if he’d agreed to it, there would have been another hurdle put in his path that would be even more problematic.