Shakur Stevenson is a free agent, and for once the headline is his own words. In a clip that opens AKHi TV’s latest, Shakur says he requested his release from Zuffa Boxing, that the request was granted over the weekend, and that he is “officially a free agent.” He is taking his career into his own hands, starting his own promotional company, and says he will work with any promoter who is as serious about his career as he is. Clean, direct, no finger-pointing — at least in that clip.
AKHi’s telling of the same story is where the warmth ends. His central claim — and he hedges it himself with “apparently” — is that Zuffa only ever wanted one fight for Shakur: Devin Haney. They would pay Shakur the money he wanted for that fight; against anybody else, he would get less than his minimum under what AKHi calls a tuneup agreement. The money Floyd Mayweather teased him about — “baby money” — was real, AKHi says, but it was Haney money. Shakur walked away from it, and AKHi’s verdict is blunt: the only influence Shakur is showing is ducking Debo, the deal is blown, and the trendsetter became the trend killer.
Notice what is NOT in this video, because the timeline has been full of it: no DAZN sabotage call, no Dana White ultimatum in anyone’s own words. Dana is never quoted. What AKHi does report — as something Shakur told him — is almost the opposite of the sabotage story: DAZN reached out to sign Shakur right before he signed with Zuffa, and Shakur is now back negotiating with the platform Haney is signed to. And the weight war? It lives entirely in X posts the video shows but never reads aloud, and the two fighters accuse each other in opposite directions. Shakur’s post says Haney agreed to 144, then 145, then had his lawyer demand 147 only. Haney’s reply says he agreed to 145, that Shakur went missing for days and tried to put a rehydration clause on him, and that six months of negotiating were wasted. One of those posts is lying about the clause. The video does not settle which — and neither will we.
AKHi also spreads the blame upward: Turki, he argues, wasted money on Fury vs Joshua — the most pointless fight in history, in his words — when a quarter of it could have made Devin vs Shakur. And he ends where this site keeps ending up: who does Shakur fight now? He should have fought Foster, AKHi says. At 135 there are Schofield and Mason — and AKHi does not think Shakur fights them. The closing clip of the video, oddly, is Shakur praising Turki for putting all the fighters in one room regardless of who they’re signed with. Maybe so. But the room only matters if you walk into the fight when it’s offered — and on AKHi’s account, the money, the moment and the man were all in that room, and Shakur walked out of the building instead.
Video credit: AKHi TV.
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