“I’ve been working my ass off,” Stevenson said. “Staying focused, staying in shape. I’ve been in camp for, like, eight weeks preparing for fights that I was told was going to happen and it has not happened but look, it is what it is. This is the business of boxing. I’m not mad at anyone, I’m not pointing no fingers, but upon all of these issues and things that’s been going on, I requested to be released from Zuffa Boxing.”
The split ends an association that began with fanfare. Stevenson, 29, signed a multi-fight deal on July 9 that White called a massive signing, and which Uncrowned reported was worth well into eight figures. He arrived as one of the sport’s most accomplished fighters: 25-0 with 11 knockouts, a four-division world champion, and fresh from a dominant January win over Teofimo Lopez for the WBO title at 140 pounds. Even the signing carried a complication. ESPN reported at the time that he was expected to vacate the WBO belt, because Zuffa Boxing had no 140-pound division and a strained relationship with the traditional sanctioning bodies.
The fight that was supposed to justify the deal never came together. Talks for a meeting with WBO welterweight champion Devin Haney stalled amid a public argument between the two fighters over what weight it should be contested at, each blaming the other on social media. Stevenson’s eight weeks of preparation were, by his account, for fights he was told were happening. None materialised.
His plan now is to control his own schedule. “I want to tell the fans and tell everybody that’s in the public that I am now taking my career in my own hands and I’m starting my own promotional company, and I’m willing to work with other promoters and anybody else that’s out there that’s willing to be serious about my career as I am about my career,” he said. His targets are the biggest available fights at 135 and 140 pounds, where he holds his title, with an eventual move to 147, where Haney, Ryan Garcia and a possible rematch with Lopez wait, on his own timeline. Self-promotion has worked for boxing’s biggest stars before, but the hard part comes after the announcement: securing dates, broadcast partners and opponents whose promoters will deal with a fighter-run company.
For Zuffa Boxing, the timing is awkward. The promotion, built inside TKO and sold to fighters on the UFC’s production machine, event cadence and media reach, staged its biggest night only five weeks ago, when Garcia stopped Conor Benn on a no-additional-cost Paramount+ card that this site covered from the plaza to the aftermath. Losing its most decorated signing over inactivity rather than money cuts against the pitch that night was meant to prove. Zuffa Boxing has not publicly responded. The departure is also echoing back into MMA: Yahoo Sports noted that UFC middleweight champion Sean Strickland appeared to reference Benn’s reported $15 million Zuffa Boxing contract while voicing frustration over UFC pay, a sign that the boxing venture’s economics are being watched closely by fighters on both sides of TKO.
Stevenson leaves with his record, his title and his leverage intact. What he does not yet have is a date. The first card his new company can actually stage will tell the sport whether walking away was a bet on himself or simply the end of a deal that never started.
