26-year-old Shakur Stevenson’s retirement yesterday was motivated by frustration over his failure to get the massive fight he’d hoped against Emanuel Navarrete.
Chris Algieri and many others don’t believe that WBC light welterweight champion Stevenson (21-0, 10 KOs) will retire in the true sense, but this is more of a situation where he got angry, grabbed his phone, and posted his unfiltered thoughts on X.
Algieri feels that Shakur must be patient because the fights he wants against Navarrete and Vasily Lomachenko can materialize once those fighters capture belts at 135 in their next contests.
Chris says that Shakur’s popularity took a negative hit with his recent effort against Edwin De Los Santos last November, in which he failed to fight in the manner of a pound-for-pound star. Boxing fans don’t like runners, and Shakur looked like one of the worst examples of that type of fighter.
Algieri: Stevenson’s Frustration Fueled His Announcement
“This is a very frustrated fighter. His lack of effort in his last performance has caused him to get jumped on by everybody,” said boxing expert Chris Algieri to ProBox TV, talking about why Shakur Stevenson announced his retirement.
“His allure has gone down based on that performance [against Edwin De Los Santos on November 25th last year]. Even though he was facing a really dangerous guy, he didn’t perform the way that was expected of someone that we were putting in the world of a pound-for-pound type fighter.”
This wasn’t the first time that Shakur had fought in an overly defensive manner, and that’s the whole problem. He’s fought like this repeatedly.
“He’s very frustrated about what the business is doing around him. He’s not seeing what’s being mapped out for him,” said Algieri. “With this Navarrete fight, he’s most likely next in line. We live in a world of unification bouts.
Not a True Retirement?
“There are great fights for him. They’re just not happening right now. Is he retiring? No. He’s unretired already. He was unretired 30 seconds after he said that. It’s a sign of frustration.
“It’s the sign of the times now. We have the ability to put our ideas out there. You young guys, when you get hot, stay off your phone. We don’t need the thought processes that go through your head.
“I don’t think this was a master plan. He got upset at what happened and got hotheaded,” said Algieri about Stevenson.
