Bye Then: Shakur Stevenson becomes the latest fighter to announce his “retirement” via social media

By Elliot Worsell

AMONG the many issues with social media, considered one of the large ones is the ease with which individuals – anybody – can faucet one thing out on their telephone, hit the ship button, after which watch as this nonsense not solely seems on-line however is by some means thought-about gospel; newsworthy.

In boxing, it is a follow we’ve got seen finessed and mastered by somebody like Tyson Fury over the years. He has turn out to be nearly synonymous, in truth, with the concept of saying his retirement simply to see how many individuals fall for it or, worse, report on it as if it’s a related (and true) information story. With Fury, too, there has lengthy been a way that he understands the stupidity of this follow – each his personal and of others – and sooner or later in his profession merely determined to have a little bit of enjoyable with it. Once this then turned obvious, it turned a lot more durable to imagine the issues he mentioned (or wrote) and finally, having maybe realised this himself, Fury gave up. Indeed, it has been some time since he introduced a retirement.

Filling that void for now could be one other fighter, Shakur Stevenson. He introduced final evening (January 29) that he had had sufficient of this boxing lark and would look to do one thing else for the remainder of his life.

“I’m officially retiring from the sport of boxing,” Stevenson, 21-0 (10), instructed his followers on Twitter/X. “I’ll be in the gym forever perfecting my craft and helping the next generation become great and chase they (sic) dreams but I ain’t fw (f**king with) this weak boxing game.”

Still solely 26 years of age, and with loads of cash nonetheless to make from the solely factor he is aware of how to do, the “retirement” of Shakur Stevenson is in fact all a nonsense. In reality, having been right here earlier than with others, you may fairly simply learn between the traces and deduce that the light-weight’s “announcement” has as a lot to do with frustration as a pure and fixed yearning for consideration. Together, it is a mixture of issues that always has boxers performing out on social media, this platform as harmful as it’s useful, and Stevenson is actually not the first younger fighter to have mentioned one thing on there he could later remorse. Nor for that matter is Stevenson the first fighter to have mentioned one thing greeted by eyerolls and scepticism by 99.9% of the individuals who occur to learn it.

“Congratulations on what you accomplished @ShakurStevenson,” wrote promoter Oscar De La Hoya in response. “Now time to vacate the title. Really enjoyed your career.”

No stranger to weird social media outbursts himself, De La Hoya, by responding to Stevenson on this method, greeted the announcement with the contempt he felt it deserved. He is aware of in addition to anybody the significance of boxing in a younger man’s life and he is aware of as effectively {that a} match and wholesome 26-year-old doesn’t merely stroll away from the sport when fed up with its politics. More than that, De La Hoya, like everybody else now, has most likely cottoned on to the methods wherein social media is being utilized by immediately’s fighters – one solely has to take a look at his current and really on-line spat with Ryan Garcia to see this – and believes the finest instrument to use to fight insincerity is insincerity.