Boxing has increasingly started to resemble a circus. Fighters like David Benavidez wait years for mandatory title shots that never materialize. Athletes are forced to pay outrageous sanctioning fees just to compete for belts they’ve earned the right to fight for. And now, ahead of the Stephen Fulton vs. O’Shaquie Foster matchup, the WBC has made a baffling decision that has fans wondering what on earth is going on.

At Friday’s weigh-ins in San Antonio, Fulton, moving up from featherweight to challenge Foster for his title, tipped the scale at 132 pounds, two pounds over the limit. As expected, he became ineligible to win the belt even if he defeats Foster. But what happened next raised even more eyebrows. Hours after the weigh-in, the WBC announced a punitive measure against Fulton, a move that feels less like discipline and more like a convenient bailout.

Stephen Fulton is handed a gift, and he hasn’t even fought O’Shaquie Foster yet

After Fulton’s miss at the scale, the sanctioning body announced that the fight would now proceed as an interim lightweight title bout at 135 pounds. In simple terms, the winner will become the mandatory challenger for Shakur Stevenson’s WBC lightweight title. Watching the situation unravel in real time, veteran boxing journalist Mike Coppinger couldn’t remain silent. “So let me get this straight,” he wrote on X.

Coppinger then laid out the confusion many fans shared. “Stephen Fulton misses weight by two pounds, so he’s not eligible to fight for O’Shaquie Foster’s 130-pound title. So now the WBC just sanctioned the fight for the interim lightweight title? And people in boxing really wonder why we need a new system?” he added in his post. Notably, Stevenson is moving up to super lightweight to face Teofimo Lopez for the WBO strap on January 31 in New York.

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The 31-year-old captured the WBC featherweight title in February before choosing to move up to face Foster. Their fight was initially set to take place on the undercard of Sebastian Fundora vs. Keith Thurman on October 25. However, after Fundora withdrew due to a hand injury, the bout was rescheduled for December. Now, Fulton and Foster will meet on the undercard of Isaac Cruz vs. Lamont Roach Jr. at the Frost Bank Center in San Antonio.

Unlike Stephen Fulton, Cruz, and Roach Jr. faced no trouble at the scale, weighing in at 138.6 pounds and 139.6 pounds, respectively. What makes Fulton’s miss even more glaring is the fact that Johan Gonzalez, who stepped in on short notice after Janibek Alimkhanuly tested positive for PEDs, still managed to make weight, coming in at 158.6 pounds for his middleweight title fight against Erislandy Lara.

And this isn’t the first time this month that the WBC has found itself under scrutiny.

Terence Crawford lashes out at the WBC for stripping his belt

Terence Crawford has unleashed a blistering response after the WBC stripped him of his super middleweight title for refusing to pay their sanctioning fee from his fight with Canelo Alvarez. The WBC lowered its fee to 0.6 percent—about $300,000, but Crawford still rejected it, prompting the organization to remove him as champion. 

On Instagram, he blasted WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman, saying, “Mauricio got a lot to say about me not paying him $300,000 plus another $100K-something… Then he’s gonna tell me I need to apologize. Who the f**k you think I am?” Terence Crawford argued the WBC acted out of favoritism. 

“Everybody in the world knows you were going for Canelo… You was mad that I beat Canelo.” He insisted the move won’t affect his legacy. “Oh well, you stripped me… I’m still the champion. Can’t take that away from me. History already been made, baby. I am legend.”

Having said that, it appears that as 2025 comes to a close, the need for changes in the sport has become apparent. But that has always been the case—nothing happened then, will that change now?