Shawn Porter used the B-word, and Fannon did not soften it: blackballed. Porter’s warning, as Fannon breaks it down, is that Shakur Stevenson’s history is about to collect its bill. The record is not hard to follow. Bob Arum and Top Rank brought Shakur along for most of his career. He left for Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom, had run-ins there with Hearn and Turki Alalshikh over money, then jumped to Matchroom’s enemy, Zuffa, as the first marquee fighter Zuffa signed. The deal was reported — and Fannon stresses it is reports — at $15 million a fight no matter who stood across from him.
What came next is the part Porter is pointing at. With that money supposedly promised, Fannon says, Shakur started dictating terms like a man picking his own sport: which weight classes he would fight at, which he would not, and at what weight he would fight which fighter. According to the reports Fannon cites, that made it very difficult for Zuffa to solidify any fight at all — and Porter says that same behaviour is what burned Shakur’s bridges with the promoters he had already left. Fannon’s question lands harder than the landing-spot question: wherever Shakur signs next, does he change? Because a terrific fighter who needs a three-month negotiation for every single fight is a fighter promoters learn to live without.
Fannon is honest about the model Shakur is copying. His mentor, Terence Crawford, famously sat in a room for nine hours and negotiated every solitary point to get the Canelo fight. It worked — for Crawford, who sits at the pinnacle of the sport. Promoters tolerate that from Bud. Fannon’s cold read is that Shakur is not Bud: he is, in Fannon’s words, a B-side and undercard fighter, the B-side to Teofimo Lopez, a man who fought on undercards even when Turki’s money was paying him. Same playbook, different leverage. And the contradictions keep piling up in public: he will fight Conor Benn at 147 but not Devin Haney at 147; he will fight O’Shaquie Foster and Gary Antuanne Russell at 140 but not his mandatory, Raymond Muratalla, at 140 — the weight where Shakur himself is champion. Fannon asks what sense any of that makes, and his other diagnosis is simple: Shakur’s biggest problem is his mouth, negotiating in public where every demand becomes fuel.
Our take: Fannon does not actually bury him. As long as Shakur holds that WBO belt and accepts the mandatory attached to it, he has cards to fight on — nobody fully blackballs a belt-holder. The danger is the version of Shakur who drops the belt to dodge Muratalla and expects the market to chase him anyway. Tank took his money up front and stayed solid; Shakur chased the Zuffa money and is stuck. Porter’s word is harsh. The pattern underneath it is just true.
Video credit: Fannon Boxing.
