After almost three months, lots of promises, and no fights, Shakur Stevenson’s time with Zuffa Boxing is coming to an end. It just wasn’t working, was Stevenson’s main explanation.
“I worked my ass off, focused, staying in shape,” Stevenson said in a news release. “I was in camp for like eight weeks to prepare for the fights that I was told were going to happen, and they didn’t happen.”
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He then asked to be let go, he said. Over the weekend, Zuffa Boxing granted him a release. Now a freelance author, he is fighting to get his book viewed through his promo team.
That must be a little mind-bending if you’re a UFC fighter, right? Maybe not before, when boxing and MMA were completely separate sports with no major connections between the two industries. But now TKO, the UFC’s parent company, has a foot in both worlds? It’s probably hard not to notice some of that stuff.
We know that differences have already reached the hearts of some of the combatants. UFC middleweight champion Sean Strickland appeared to report Conor Benn’s hefty $15 million Zuffa Boxing contract, explaining his frustrations with UFC pay. And when word first broke that a single TKO event had been deigned to give his fighter a release, it took no time at all for Jake Paul to hint that the same courtesy would be extended to the MMA side of the business.
Shakur Stevenson and Sean Strickland have handled situations very differently over the past month.
(Ed Mulholland via Getty Images)
This is not surprising. MMA fighters have been trying to cash them out of boxing for years. What they are now beginning to accept is the importance not only in the number of cards in the paycheck, but in the total freedom to contract. This is great because while one allows you to buy a better type of luxury course with your products, the other gives you permission to dream of a completely different future.
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Take middleweight Strickland, for example. As UFC CEO Dana White was quick to point out, he signed a new contract back in the spring. He had to fight for that title against Khamzat Chimaev in May, whom he then defeated.
But now it is closed for a long time. And in the UFC’s Paramount+ era, where no more paychecks are to be accepted, it’s a contract that spells out exactly what he hopes to do as a future champion. The sacrament is no longer there. It is not a dream that, with a just fight for a just right outcome, a paycheck could rain money from the sky. His potential UFC earnings are all spelled out there in black and white, and he doesn’t stack up favorably against the money the same parent company offers less successful fighters in another category of their operations.
There is also no real opportunity to do anything about it. It is now closed. The rates are set and will not change until he fights his way to the end of this contract or convinces the UFC to give him a new one. And if he chooses to sit and wait for a better situation, contracts and fixed rates will wait with him. Not even leisure can change it.
For some fighters, it is a sense of limitation that offends them, as far as interest in the salary. All of their things have reached the top of the mountain and now they are here, ruling the UFC. Which is when he starts to feel something, there is nowhere to go unless he goes down. Everyone wants what they have, even if it comes with a long-term contract and a cap on their products. This is as good as it gets, and somehow they always thought it would be better than this.
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Imagine, then, looking into the boxing business side, and seeing paydays, flexibility of contracts, the power of just asking and accepting business to pay elsewhere. I don’t like not knowing that this is happening in the world of sweet science. But now it feels like a disparity in the house. TKO can do all these things to other guys. Why not us?
Perhaps this was necessary. Since the same company has planted its flag in each of the major fighting games, perhaps the comparison has become a thief of joy. The question is what everyone can do. UFC fighters always seem to bump into the same barriers. They can get out of bed or suck and fight for the money they offer. The other option is a long and expensive court battle, which no one has yet seen reach a satisfactory conclusion.
They have more or less taken this for years, because what else do they do? Now, these big tipsters apparently know there are other ways to go about this business — just not when it comes to wearing 4-inch gloves.
That has a frustrating feeling. But now the TKO has a foothold in every fight game, so it’s becoming more common for UFC fighters. I will say from time to time, whether it is with more use that it makes it easier on any stomach.