Comments Thread For: Shakur Stevenson: "I Never Seen Anybody More B-tch Made Than Frank Martin"

[Bullrider]

Frank Martin aside, I said elsewhere but regardless of whether ducked or priced out, the fact is that Shakur refused to accept a fight that would've gotten him the "reward" that would provided the motivation for others to fight him especially if he isn't willing to offer money for reward. Maybe he thought he should get more than what was offered, and as a two division champ he thought he should have the A-side treatment which may be understandable from his side, but the fact right this moment is that he is a beltless fighter who seems to not be willing to offer good money to fight him. He needs to understand his potential opponents get nothing except fight money and a slim possibility to get bragging rights among hardcore fans that they defeated a currently beltless former two division champ but nothing to show at the current weight, while risking losing their zero and losing market value, losing out on a chance for more money in the future, not to mention potentially getting injured.

Like him or not, Haney actually took the time and effort to collect all the belts to become undisputed. His market value is heavy on the fact that he is "the champion who has all the belts in this weight class" and the man to beat to claim the best of the class. If he is going to risk losing all the belts and lowering his market value, he has all the right to try to gain as much as possible. Since Shakur isn't going to have a belt to offer, it is understanding that he will want money instead because in the business world of boxing the bragging rights of "I defeated a beltless former two division champ Shakur" doesn't feed you in public. What Shakur should have done is to suck it up and accepted the Haney fight first to get the belts, then become the top dog by the belts as well as skills at this weight then demand the money.

I mean, Inoue managed to get Fulton for his first first without any belts to offer but instead he offered by far the biggest cash reward that Fulton would only dream of getting fighting anyone else, which made it worth risking losing his belts and zero and status as the man to beat at 122 lbs. Fulton didn't accept to fight Inoue in Japan because he thought Inoue was the top dog and therefore he deserves to fight at his home. He accepted travelling to Japan as the belt holding champ because he got 3-4 million dollars by doing so instead of few hundred thousands fighting random challenger he can beat with ease in Philadelphia. Obviously Frank Martin is no where near the value of where Fulton was, but Shakur is not exactly national cash cow of Inoue's caliber yet either when he is beltless.

Silly nonsense. What's this got to do with Martin turning down a fight with Stevenson?

[El_Mero]

I like Shakur but if 25% is what Martin turned down, Shakur has no business b!tchin about it. Especially after turning down the same for a shot a all 4 belts.

[CPNUTKnockoutFreshMart]

Martin better have been secretly negotiating for a Tank or Haney fight , anything less and it's going to look like he punked out. One million dollars is fair for a fighter like him. He's not a ticket seller , never had a title or even a title fight , and no one that's not a real boxing fan knows who he is. If I were Shakur ,I wouldn't entertain giving him half either. I might have given him a couple , maybe 3 more 100k but that's it.

[jockpunk]

Martin better have been secretly negotiating for a Tank or Haney fight , anything less and it's going to look like he punked out. One million dollars is fair for a fighter like him. He's not a ticket seller , never had a title or even a title fight , and no one that's not a real boxing fan knows who he is. If I were Shakur ,I wouldn't entertain giving him half either. I might have given him a couple , maybe 3 more 100k but that's it.

Martin could have went to purse bid if he wanted. Someone probably would have bid $5mil for the fight, of which martin would get $2M. He didn't want the fight. If he didn't want the fight because he was promised tank that is one thing. Anything else is a duck.

[dannnnn]

Wait. So Shakur turned down Devins 25% only to offer Frank 25% and then talk as if he's some sort of cash cow or huge draw? Who does he think he is? Say what you want about Devin, but he took a sh** offer to get the opportunity to become undisputed. Shakur acts entitled as if he's an accomplished or pound for pound. He hasn't fought 1 real threat or brought in big numbers. I hate these entitled divas.

I agree with your post except for the bit about Haney accepting a raw deal to fight Kambosos. IMO he got a fantastic deal. Two fights against a very beatable opponent for all the belts in one fell swoop along with a reported $10m+ in earnings. The only downside for him was having to be the away fighter twice, but nobody did him dirty and everything was impartial. Fighters travel all the time.

The rest I totally agree with though. Shakur can't complain about being avoided if he's only offering 25%, that's kind of eye-opening.

[Elheath]

Silly nonsense. What's this got to do with Martin turning down a fight with Stevenson?

It has to do with the concept of risk vs return in the business side of boxing.

Looking at it from the opponent's point of view, both Shakur and Inoue are considered as high risk because they are both damn good fighters who has a good chance of defeating the opponent if they fight, which will lower the opponent's market value in some shape. So, from any logical business standpoint there needs to also be a high enough return to make taking the high risk worth it for the opponent. People are willing to high risk high return gambles or a safe low risk low return gambles, but not high risk low return for obvious reasons.

Again, Martin is no where near Fulton in terms of resume or ability, but they are loosely similar in that they were both given the choice of fighting a very high risk fighter. Fulton decided it was worth it to take the high risk of fighting Inoue and potentially losing market value by losing his belts, his zero, and his status as the top guy at 122, because Inoue also offered an extremely high return in the shape of crazy amount of money for that weight class. Martin on the other hand only really has his zero to lose so he will never get anything close to what Fulton got, but that is still an asset that matters in the current situation of boxing. Even bigger is that given his current weight class and promoter, as long as he keeps his zero he has a chance to potentially face Tank which will likely give him more than what Shakur offered at the cost of his zero.

By fighting Shakur for less than what a Tank match would've gotten him and losing his zero Martin will essentially lose any chance of being chosen to be the lucky victim fed to Tank and receive more money than what Shakur likely offered. And, even if by a total fluke lucky accident somehow Martin ended up winning against Shakur, all he will get for taking the huge risk is low money and no belts, which doesn't add to his market value. So for Martin, Shakur doesn't have enough incentive to fight him and saw it worth waiting.

Now hypothetically, if Shakur was the undisputed champ, even with less money there will be more incentive to take the risk at the slim chance of becoming an undisputed yourself.