Boxing

Shakur Stevenson Wanted To 'Shut' Turki Alalshikh Up For Tom & Jerry Disrespect

Shakur Stevenson sent a strong message about Turki Alalshikh's trolling spree before his July 12 fight.
Grant Young|
IMAGO / Torsten Helmke

In the lead-up to WBC lightweight champion Shakur Stevenson's July 12 fight against William Zepeda, Stevenson was at the receiving end of social media trolls by Turki Alalshikh (Chairman of Saudi Arabia's General Entertainment Authority) for his reputation as not being an entertaining fighter.

While Alalshikh was a key part of the promotion to Shakur's title defense, that didn't keep him from making several social media posts mocking Stevenson as a "Tom and Jerry" type of fighter, which was another way of saying that he tends to run around his opponents instead of stand in the middle of the ring and scrap.

One example of this is Alalshikh joking that he would create a ring that decreases in size as Shakur's fight progressed, which he showed with a July 6 X post that read, "This is the solution to deliver amazing fight on Saturday, right?"

While Alalshikh's trolls were clearly in jest, Stevenson admitted that they irked him during his July 14 interview on The Ariel Helwani Show.

"I could have started off the fight using a lot of lateral movement, and moved all around the ring, but then 'Tom and Jerry' would have been the situation," Stevenson said, per an X post from Helwani.

When Helwani then asked whether Alalshikh's comments were on Stevenson's mind during the fight, Stevenson said, "I'm gonna be honest, it was on my mind. It kind of got to me. I'm a competitor. I'm so competitive to where, like, I do hear stuff and I kind of want to shut the critics up. I wanna shut people up and give them something real to talk about.

"And also, I want people to know I can fight, too. I'm not just a boxer. I've been boxing my whole life. I'm a fighter, boxer. I can do it all. Like, whatever I choose to do that night is what I'm gonna do," he added.

Props to Stevenson for being willing to admit that Alalshikh's sentiment was on his mind. And given his dominant performance, the comments clearly fueled him.

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Grant Young
GRANT YOUNG

Grant Young is a Staff Writer for On SI’s Boxing, New York Mets, Indiana Fever, and Women’s Fastbreak sites. Before joining SI in 2024, he wrote for various boxing and sports verticals such as FanBuzz and NY Fights. Young has a bachelor’s degree in marketing and a master’s degree in creative writing with an emphasis on sports nonfiction from the University of San Francisco, where he played five seasons of Division 1 baseball. He fought Muay Thai professionally in Thailand in 2023, loves a good essay, and is driven crazy trying to handle a pitpull puppy named Aura. Young lives in San Diego and was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area.