Hamzah Sheeraz Plots His Next Move: 'The Most Important Contract of My Career'

Hamzah Sheeraz is 23-0-1 with 19 knockouts, holds the WBO super middleweight belt, and is about to make what he calls the most important decision of his career — and he's doing it with no offer on the table. The unbeaten champion says a mandated defense against an opponent with an adverse finding is now heading to purse bids, because nobody has come to him with a number yet.

That includes the big three: no offer from DAZN, none from Queensberry, none from Top Rank. Sheeraz is fine with fighting the mandatory — he's accepted it — but he's not convinced the money will land where a champion's biggest night should. His read is blunt: if there were real value in the fight for the other side, Top Rank would have already made a bid.

Prizefighter Math

Sheeraz frames himself as a prizefighter first, meaning he'll fight for the right price and can live with slightly less if it's fair. What he won't ignore is a payday that comes in considerably low for what he considers the biggest fight of his career. It's a familiar tension for any titleholder forced into a mandatory that doesn't sell — the belt says you have to, the ledger says it barely pays.

There's a loyalty question running underneath all of it. Sheeraz has been with Queensberry since the beginning and credits them with building him from a fighter nobody expected to become a star. He didn't have a decorated amateur pedigree; his own account is that people wrote him off before his first European title fight, then started believing once he won it away from home. Now he says he's exploring options and has been honest with Queensberry about it — re-signing is very much on the table, but so is looking around.

Reading the Room at 168

Sheeraz also weighed in on the division's biggest names, and he's not writing off Canelo Alvarez. He argues Canelo's recent form has been dulled by awkward, negative opponents like William Scull, and that Terence Crawford is simply a special case who handles anyone. On a hypothetical Canelo–Christian Mbilli, Sheeraz sees Mbilli as tailor-made for the Mexican — a come-forward fighter who's there to be hit — and predicts a late stoppage or a comfortable but active decision for Canelo.

For now, the practical story is simpler. A champion with a spotless record is stuck in a mandatory that hasn't generated a single offer, and his next signature could reshape the back half of his career. Purse bids will settle the immediate fight. The contract question is the one that actually matters.