Boxing’s biggest January winners and losers: Jarrell Miller's $700 disaster, plus all aboard the Shakur train

How are your New Year’s resolutions going?

Knocked the booze on the head? Limiting yourself to three candy bars a week? Spending $200 per month to join the local gym, finding yourself in the midst of a Royal Rumble but without the spandex?

Or have you just let December seamlessly roll into January without barely glancing in the mirror?

No judgement here — but while you were doing you, the following names in the world of boxing were taking early wins and losses in 2026.

Let’s see who won and who lost most in January.

WINNERS

Shakur Stevenson

Shakur is a lock this month and could well become one of the biggest winners of 2026 over the next 11 months.

The 28-year-old became the third-youngest fighter ever to become a four-weight world champion — only behind Oscar De La Hoya and Adrien Broner — by routing Teofimo Lopez Jr. to seize the WBO super lightweight title.

This punch-perfect display underlined Stevenson’s place in bold at the top end of the sport’s pound-for-pound rankings, leaping him up to third in Uncrowned’s own rankings, sitting only behind the behemoths of Naoya Inoue and Oleksandr Usyk.

Stevenson has the sport at his feet and has the potential to become a generational American superstar.

Xander Zayas

Speaking of record-breaking youngsters, Puerto Rico’s Xander Zayas became the sport’s youngest unified male world champion at just 23 years old, adding the WBA super welterweight title to the WBO’s by beating Abass Baraou on home turf.

Zayas’ feat was slightly overshadowed by Shakur Stevenson’s brilliance and Jarrell Miller’s toupee on the final weekend of January, but dig a little deeper and you would’ve seen Top Rank’s boy become a man in his 23rd outing.

In a weight class dominated by chatter surrounding the will-they-won’t-they saga between Vergil Ortiz Jr. and Jaron “Boots” Ennis, Zayas reminded the boxing world that there are more than two ways to skin the 154-pound division.

And with Sebastian Fundora and Josh Kelly also owning real estate at that weight, boy do we have a class to keep our eyes on.

British world champions

Forget the Year of the Horse, 2026 is shaping up to be the Year of the Brits!

“Ruuuuule, Britannia, Britannia rule the waves” — yuck, forgive my colonial ancestors, but Dalton Smith and Josh Kelly have invaded boxing’s top table after two upset victories in January, grabbing gold in the shape of the WBC super lightweight and IBF super welterweight world titles.

Smith and Kelly join Nick Ball, Fabio Wardley, Jazza Dickens and Lewis Crocker as current world titlists, turning the tables on what was a pretty fruitless 2025 for Team GB.

These wins toppled legitimate former champions in Subriel Matias and Bakhram Murtazaliev — a parlay for both to win would have returned $8 from a $1 wager!

Bruce Carrington

January can’t slide by without giving “Shu Shu” his flowers.

Stopping Carlos Castro in the ninth round inside Madison Square Garden earned the 28-year-old the vacant WBC featherweight title, and set the wheels turning on the Brooklyn fighter’s attempt to make history at 126 pounds.

He spoke beautifully on Uncrowned’s “The Ariel Helwani Show,” stating his intention to unify the division, “Monster”-hunt Naoya Inoue and potentially jump up to 154 pounds at some point in his career.

As they say: Reach for the moon and you might just land among the stars …

Jarrell Miller

Fair play to Jarrell Miller.

It was a toss up to decide whether “Big Baby” landed in the winners or losers bracket this month after literally failing to keep his $700 wig on during his Madison Square Garden split decision win over Kingsley Ibeh.

But the heavyweight’s exceptional reaction to something that would normally be toe-curlingly embarrassing earned him kudos across the viral incident. A moment that grabbed more column inches than pound-for-pound debates, new world champions and homecomings of Puerto Rican world champions — boxing is a funny ol’ sport.

It makes you wonder what the point of it all is …

Anyway, well done, Jarrell. At least when you hang up the gloves you’ll be remembered for more than your — checks notes — four (minimum) failed drugs tests.

LOSERS

Teofimo Lopez Jr. & Sr.

Terence “Bud” Crawford gave us this entry, by literally calling Teofimo Lopez Jr. and Sr. “losers” in the ring following Shakur Stevenson’s historic victory.

Now, this wasn’t poor form or poor sportsmanship by the retired, unbeaten five-weight world champion, but simply a response to the baiting he received from the father-son duo in the build-up to this past weekend’s main event inside Madison Square Garden.

Crawford then posted on X, doubling down on his new-found role as a post-retirement hypeman:

“They mad!!! It’s cool when they do it, it’s a problem when I do it. F*** ’em!!!! F*** Teo, f*** his daddy, f*** his sister and anyone else that has a problem”

Oh, and if you wanted any more persuading as to their inclusion, Lopez took his opportunity post-fight to bizarrely apologize for slavery after previously making insensitive and racist remarks about his fellow boxers.

Time and a place, Teo.

Subriel Matias

I hate to kick a man while he’s down, but I guess my foot feels a little bit better knowing that the man in question has failed a drug test for the banned substance ostarine.

But don’t let that change anything. After all, this adverse finding didn’t stop Subriel Matias’ WBC super lightweight title fight from going ahead against Britain’s Dalton Smith in early January, one he subsequently lost via fifth-round TKO.

The New York State Athletic Commission deemed the level of ostarine found in Matias’ A-sample (0.085 ng/ml) to be below the threshold of (0.1 ng/ml), meaning the fight was still able to take place.

Call me old-fashioned, but a failed test is a failed test, and in a contact sport like boxing, the dice should never be rolled on an opponent’s health.

Bakhram Murtazaliev

It’s not often a boogeyman is beaten by a “Pretty Boy” — outside of Disney fairytales at least.

But Bakhram Murtazaliev’s defeat at the hands of Josh Kelly in Newcastle for the IBF’s super welterweight crown unmasked the former champion and dispelled the myth that he was the untouchable force at 154 pounds.

At age 33, there’ll be a fear that the Chechen (fighting out of California) burned bright and fast after a head-turning 2024 campaign.

Inactivity has been an Achilles heel for many fighters in boxing history, and an impressive Kelly combined to create the perfect storm that saw Murtazaliev lose for the first time in his 24-fight career.

Khalil Coe

Sometimes it’s hard to explain the detailed nuances of boxing to people outside of the sport’s circus.

WBA, IBF, WBO and WBC might as well be WTF, LOL, ROFL and LMAO — that’s before we even start on the interim, secondary and bridgerweight titles.

But making weight is fairly straightforward.

And look, we’ve all done it — we’ve all stood on a scale expecting the number to be lower than it is.

But when light heavyweight contender Khalil Coe weighed in at 182.8 pounds — 7.8 pounds over the agreed 175-pound limit — for his fight against Jesse Hart, it became a foregone conclusion he’d land on this month’s loser list.

And it’s not just the month Coe lost. Add in his $30,000 penalty, and his majority decision victory over Hart suddenly seems like a small consolation after a messy weekend.

iVB

Time check: It’s 6:32 a.m. on Tuesday morning here in London and I am still none the wiser as to what iVB are planning in the boxing world.

The company’s CEO, Ed Pereira, went on a media rampage a fortnight ago trying to put some meat on the bones of their adventurous ideas — mainly focusing on staging a fight between TBA vs. TBA with a world-record attendance of 140,000 in San Francisco, something that nobody has, or ever will, ask for — but has since retreated into silence.

At the time of this writing, iVB still doesn’t have any fighters, a promotor, investors or a broadcast deal. But hey, they have 184,000 Instagram followers and a whopping 480 on X (yes, that’s four-hundred-and-eighty) with a promise of “Bringing boxing back to the people.”

Oh, well I guess I am one of those “people.”

Thanks, iVB. I guess I should shut my mouth, drink the Kool-Aid and be grateful that a company of such altruism is willing to enter boxing.

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