Days after dethroning Teofimo Lopez for the WBO junior welterweight title, Shakur Stevenson found out he was stripped of his lightweight title by the WBC.
Stevenson fired back, calling the sanctioning body "crooks" and asserting that he was stripped of the title because of a $100,000 sanctioning fee (later corrected to be $120,000) that he failed to pay the WBC for the Lopez fight.
WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman is now offering his side of the story.
Sulaiman said Stevenson's management reached out by phone to have the WBC put on the event with Lopez with a special version of the WBC title on the line.
"The WBC has it within the rules when you have a champion in a division who wants to fight a champion in another weight division," Sulaiman said in an interview with Boxing Scene. "We accepted for Stevenson to fight but we asked for everything to be formalized in writing ... and it never happened."
Sulaiman said Stevenson's team was unresponsive after numerous attempts to finalize the deal. With no deal in place, Stevenson was required to pay the sanctioning fee, which had been avoided, leading to the WBC stripping him of the title. The title is listed as "vacant" by the sanctioning body.
"It is a truly regretful situation," Sulaiman said. "But the rules are very clear in every single organization that when a champion engages in a fight, he is to abide by the rules, which includes payment of sanctioning fees."
A similar situation happened months ago with Stevenson's close friend Terence Crawford, who was also stripped after not paying the sanctioning fees.
