Shakur Stevenson’s time with Top Rank is nearing a Sunday morning expiration after the unbeaten three-division champion completes his Saturday night homecoming bout in Newark, N.J., against Armenia’s Artem Harutyunyan.
“The live gate will likely be over $700,000, which is good,” Top Rank Chairman Bob Arum told BoxingScene on Tuesday. “He does have a following, but he’s still not a pay-per-view attraction like [Baltimore’s fellow lightweight champion Gervonta] Davis.”
That’s the distinguishing – and surprising – threshold where Stevenson, 27, finds himself now, eight years after claiming a silver medal in Brazil, the most successful showing by a U.S. Olympian in the previous 12 years.
“He’s a free agent – like in basketball or the NFL,” Arum said. “We’ve had a frank discussion about him testing the market – ‘If you can make a better deal, by all means, take it. If you can’t, we love you, come back and we’re happy to make fights for you.’ We would welcome him, no animosity at all.
“Free agency is free agency. He – and we – have fulfilled our contracts.”
From where they were during their 2016 union, however, it feels like both Stevenson and Top Rank have fallen short on this journey even though the fighter owns a 21-0 record with world titles at featherweight, junior lightweight and the WBC lightweight strap he wears now.
Back then, under the management of now Hall of Fame two-division champion Andre Ward and James Prince, Stevenson and Top Rank aligned as an opportunity for the promoter to answer some of the criticism it received and deserved after watching Floyd Mayweather Jr. achieve his greatest financial success after leaving the company.
In the past, Mayweather has said bluntly that Top Rank didn’t know how to promote a Black fighter.
Stevenson was supposed to be the reply. Yet even though he maintains genuine charisma, engages on social media and will even pick up his phone and chat with reporters without hesitation, he fights as Mayweather did in his later years – content to let his speed, evasiveness and skill win fights on the scorecards.
Asked why Stevenson hasn’t connected to the masses like Davis and Ryan Garcia have, Arum said, “Because people like fighters who win by knockouts. [Stevenson’s] not that kind of fighter. He’s a brilliant technician who wins his fights by wide margins. Not knockouts.
“It’s the same reason Aaron Judge is more popular to baseball fans than a batting champion. Home runs sell.”
With just 10 knockouts, Stevenson has shown the capability to drop the best of his opposition, as he did in decking two-division champion Oscar Valdez of Mexico in 2022. But he’s also stunk out a joint, as he did in his most recent bout, a snoozer over Edwin De Los Santos that earned the indignity of being the 12-round world-title fight with the fewest punches ever thrown.
Boos surrounded the Las Vegas arena, fans left early.
“He understands,” Arum said. “The day after the fight, [Stevenson] called me up to apologize. He’s a very smart kid. He’s not a fool. He’s aware.”
Stevenson called out consensus No. 1 lightweight title contender William Zepeda (30-0, 26 KOs), but Arum said Zepeda promoter Oscar De La Hoya never called to negotiate the bout even though he left the impression he would be following Zepeda’s destructive stoppage of Maxi Hughes in March.
Instead, Stevenson fights Armenia’s Artem Harutyunyan (12-1, 7 KOs) on ESPN on Saturday, while Zepeda meets Giovanni Cabrera on DAZN.
“Oscar understands fighting,” Arum said. “[Zepeda] would get picked apart. Why risk a fight with Shakur when they have such a big investment [in Zepeda]?
“The problem with Shakur for a guy like Zepeda is he’s difficult to beat and there’s not a lot of cash at the end of the rainbow.”
Top Rank owns its portion of blame for that. Following Stevenson’s first title victory, at featherweight in 2019, the pandemic struck and he was left to fill ESPN programming in the MGM Grand Bubble against no-names Toka Kahn Clary and Felix Caraballo.
Then, after the brilliant, uplifting Valdez victory, Stevenson was assigned Robson Conceicao, Shuichiro Yoshino, De Los Santos and now Harutyunyan, best known for losing to recently knocked-out lightweight title challenger Frank Martin.
Stevenson has been his own culprit at times. In 2019, he was seen striking a woman on a Miami garage camera. He then sprinted out of his celebratory Valdez news conference to confront fighting in the MGM Grand concourse that he thought threatened his family, escorting them to safety, exchanging the complete telling of his victory story to a tale about his involvement in needless brawling.
Stevenson has vowed to make Saturday’s showing his most aggressive yet. When it’s over, he’ll learn if promoters other than Top Rank will be moved to secure his services. While Matchroom’s Eddie Hearn has expressed interest, Top Rank seems better positioned to provide Stevenson the type of fights that can move him toward that pay-per-view standard.
Currently negotiating with Premier Boxing Champions to stage a bout between PBC’s WBA champion Davis (30-0, 28 KOs) and Top Rank’s IBF champion Vasiliy Lomachenko, Top Rank can offer new WBO lightweight champion Denys Berinchyk to Stevenson, along with the possibility of fighting the Davis-Lomachenko winner, Arum said.
Either that or Stevenson opts for a new path charted by someone he has more faith in, with Top Rank positioned to move on.
“I agree [Stevenson’s] a tremendous talent. But a lot of guys are tremendously talented,” Arum said, mentioning Top Rank rising American contenders, lightweights Keyshawn Davis (10-0, and also an Olympic silver medalist) and Abdullah Mason (13-0, 11 KOs).
“We don’t lack in America for tremendous talents.”