Stephan Shaw, the fifth-best heavyweight boxer in the country, stands in the ring with someone who just started boxing.
It's a weekday evening, and Shaw is in a converted garage in Florissant, Missouri, that has been transformed into a boxing facility called St. Louis Boxing Academy. Heavy bags hang from the ceiling, and a makeshift ring sits in the middle of the concrete floor. Before the fight started, a half dozen people of all different ages were hitting heavy bags, but now they crowd around to see what will happen when one of the best fighters in the country takes the ring.
That's when Hosana Mulambu, the beginner, stumbles toward Shaw, his feet stuttering and chopping forward. Mulambu is around 6-foot-2 with bulging muscles, and has been training for months. But his flurry of left-hand jabs seem more like taps against Shaw's shoulder. Shaw absorbs them, barely even acknowledges them. Shaw's wife leans over the rope, videotaping, yelling for him to jab and hit the body, reminding him that he's the greatest.
For 10 or 20 seconds, Shaw doesn't throw a punch. His feet are planted. He holds his hands in front of his sleeveless 2Pac tank top, showing off his chiseled 6-foot-4 frame. He's just waiting, watching, thinking, taking a few punches — then pow. A blinking left jab right in Mulambu's forehead. "Oof," someone says on the sideline. Mulambu's head bounces backward. The makeshift ring shakes. The punch is faster than it sounds, and the pssss noise lingers in the air.
"He's like the most dangerous person on this planet!" Shaw's father proclaims from the sideline.
When the round comes to an end, Shaw gives Mulambu, who's still dizzy from the single jab, a hug. It seems like a hug reserved for the end of a tortuous fight. Shaw barely broke a sweat and threw just a few quick jabs. But he seems to be saying thank you. His father offers him water, but Shaw just keeps bouncing up and down, counting down the seconds until the second round begins.
Shaw is the 29th-best heavyweight boxer in the world, the fifth-best in the U.S., according to BoxRec. He's 17-0, with 13 knockouts. In his last fight, televised on ESPN, Shaw, or "Big Shot," as he's called, knocked down his opponent three times in the first round. He's just a few fights away from a chance at the heavyweight title and millions of dollars.
But here he is, in a garage in Florissant at 7 p.m., fighting against Mulambu, a 31-year-old who has never competed in an amateur contest and started fighting one year ago. The idea is unfathomable, as if LeBron James went one-on-one with a guy in a men's league.
When Shaw leaves the ring 30 minutes later, though, he sounds thrilled. He's happy just to have fought against a warm body.
"Man, I needed these eight rounds," he says. "I haven't done that in a minute."
Shaw pulls aside the boxers in the gym. He remembers each of their names. He looks them in the eye and thanks them for helping him. "Keep getting better," he says. "Whenever you need me, I got you." He takes a photo with all of them in the ring and holds up the number one.
After the photos, he lingers in the ring — and there, it comes out. It comes pouring out. The frustration, the sadness that is always simmering beneath the surface.
His voice, once light and easygoing, becomes sharp and agitated. For 10 straight minutes, it fills the gym, rising with each word. He grandstands to anyone who will listen, which on this weekday evening consists of only a few people — Mulambu, his dad, the gym owner, a bystander and a reporter.
He steamrolls through topics. How a boxer didn't follow him back on Instagram. How he's getting his championship belt the "old-school way." How he's undefeated. How his next confirmed fight isn't for seven months.
"Why the fuck are they keeping me out the ring for seven months?" he asks the onlookers. "Why is seven months of inactivity even a thought after my first round of knockouts? Ain't no way! Put that motherfucker in the ring for the next three months! You know what I'm saying? 'He just knocked the shit out of him in the first round; he needs some more work!'"
Shaw tells the onlookers that he loves boxing. He's one of the best boxers in the world, after all, good enough to have an undefeated record and spar with Deontay Wilder, the former heavyweight champion. He loves being in the gym, pounding cracked bags and dancing around the ring, with his entire family surrounding him. He loves the showmanship, the history and the science of the sport.
But it's not so clear that boxing loves him back. He's made little money and has little fame outside of boxing. He could lose a fight and watch his world-championship aspirations disappear. He goes through long stretches without being in the ring. He has to practice against beginners in garages in Florissant.
What do you do when you're one of the best in the world at something — and few people are paying attention? Stephan Shaw keeps boxing.
"I love it," he tells the onlookers. "If you don't love it, this will be hell."
Inside an elementary school basement in Jennings, Missouri, where there is no air conditioning, that's where the fifth-best boxer in the country trains.
Shaw walks in every day shortly after 5 p.m, right when the gym is starting to fill up with little kids trying on gloves for the first time, parents watching from the sidelines, elders talking about the good old days. You'll hear the beep of an electronic bell, the smack of people hitting things, and the music of Stevie Wonder or MoneyBagg Yo. The windows are scratched, tiles are missing from the floor, and the ropes sag and creak. The ring's floor, long ripped apart from so much boxing, is covered in gray duct tape.
On a weekday evening in August, Shaw enters the gym with his wife and two boys under the ages 9 and 5. He stops by each person, all 30 or so packed into the elementary school basement, for a fist bump.
He sits down in a plastic chair next to Doc, an elderly man wearing a Vietnam War veteran's hat. People gravitate to Shaw. He's warm and open and easy to talk to, and he can talk about anything. "He doesn't brush off anyone," his mom, Stephanie Dale-Shaw, says. "He embraces anyone that wants to embrace him and connect with him."
His dad ties Shaw's gloves, and then Shaw gets to work. He shadow boxes the air, jabbing, uppercutting, dashing from side to side as if possessed. He doesn't have the ring to himself — he shares it with his wife and two teenaged, amateur boxers.
The gym lights up every time Shaw enters the ring. He's playful, loud and full of energy. He shakes his gloves to the rap music. He makes funny noises. He puts on his '90s playlist. He shows off what it means to be fancy in boxing.
"Once you get a li'l jelly with it. Once you get a li'l bit more skills, you know, Kyrie-it. Now you can." He slides from corner to corner like a skater, like a dancer, a boxer. "The jelly. The razzle. The dazzle."
"Oohhhh!" he says, picking up speed, flying around the ring, laughing and smiling. "Now you see me! Now you don't! The Ali. Just having fun. Being creative," he says, bumping into his wife by accident.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," she says, giggling. "Big man coming through."
After shadow boxing, Shaw will start to hit the bags. And when Shaw punches — it doesn't matter how many buzzers are going off, how many people are punching — everyone in the gym knows it. POP-POP-POP-POP. He threads the punches together in a blur. Jab-jab-jab uppercut left hook right hook, feint, duck, jabhookjab. Shaw hits so hard that the bags have a dent, and his 6-foot-2 father, who holds them in place, has to wear knee braces. It's hard to imagine how a human being can withstand such a punch. "Like gunshots," Doc says from the sideline.
When he's actually fighting, Shaw doesn't dance in the ring like Muhammad Ali. He doesn't hunt after opponents like Mike Tyson. He doesn't really move at all. It's jarring to watch him fight. He kind of parks in the middle of the ring and stands there — calculating, thinking, observing. Then his opponent throws a punch and, in a matter of a millisecond, Shaw's feet spark to life. He will bounce backward and swat away the jab. If he gets backed to the ropes, he simply shuffles and slips away before any damage is done. His feet are light and quick. "Like a middleweight," his trainer, Basheer Abdullah, says. "Like a ballerina," Shaw says. But he likes to cement himself in the center of the ring, where he can mold the match to his liking, where he has complete control.
It's this intelligence — this ability to process and strategize in such a short amount of time — that makes him a heavyweight contender. "[Boxers are] very, very smart athletes, and even amongst them, Stephan's top 1 percent," says his manager, David McWater. Shaw is known for picking apart boxing tendencies, slowly and patiently, until he has them completely understood — and then attacking with knockout blows.
But in recent months, Shaw has changed his boxing style. He doesn't have a choice. He needs to get more attention around his name. He needs more fights and more money. No one seems to care about patient boxing. They want knockouts.
"What is skills?" he says. "Doesn't sell tickets. Doesn't put enough asses in that seats. Might get you that belt that you've always been wanting since you were a little kid. But to give you this top millions of dollars that you say you deserve or that you want — you got to put some asses in the seats."
In his most recent fight against Bernardo Marquez, Shaw seemed like a completely different boxer. Twenty seconds into the fight, Marquez fired a left-hand hook, one of his first punches in the match. Shaw easily jumped out of the way, and Marquez stumbled forward.
In earlier fights, Shaw would have stayed still, continuing to prowl, continuing to control the pace of the fight. But this time, Shaw pounced on Marquez. He unleashed a fury of punches faster than he has, maybe, ever. Right hook left hook right hook. Marquez fell forward, ducking, trying to hide from the blows, his chest arched toward the ground, his hands in front of his head.
Left, right, left, right, until Marquez couldn't duck any further, collapsing to one knee so the beating could stop.
In two minutes, the fight ended — after Shaw knocked him down twice more.
"Stephan Shaw proves his name is true," the play-by-play announcer said. "Big. Shot. Shaw."
Shaw waltzed around the ring, staring into the crowd, at the camera. Then he returned to his corner, where his dad hung over the ropes, holding his hands above his head.
"Come on! Give me some!" his father yelled, cradling his son's head with two hands and giving him a kiss.
Boxing, Stephan Shaw says, is ingrained into his blood.
His father, Brian Shaw, is a local coach and former boxer who competed in the junior Olympics. His grandfather, Winston "Buddy" Shaw, is one of St. Louis' legendary trainers, the former boxing coach at Cochran Recreation Center in north city. Shaw remembers, as a kid, visiting his grandfather's house in University City only to find his grandfather's protégé, Cory Spinks, a world champion, chilling in the basement watching professional boxing matches.
"It's a hereditary sport," Shaw says.
He started going to the gym at four years old, trying on gloves and wanting to spar with everyone and anyone. At home, he would hide in the basement and watch VHS tapes of old fights while wearing a coordinated boxing outfit with a homemade mouthpiece and boxing gloves. He'd punch the walls until the entire north St. Louis home started shaking. He would position the couches into a square like a ring, with his Rottweiler, Missy, watching.
Down there, down in the basement, by himself, that's where Shaw liked to stay. He was a homebody, his mother, Dale-Shaw, says. There was something about boxing — the solitude — that attracted Shaw.
From the moment he was born, he was smart. He had a photographic memory. His parents got him Kayo trading cards, and he memorized every boxer on them — stats, records and bios. His mom thought he should become a meteorologist because he watched a hailstorm, got curious and started to study weather patterns religiously. "Even in middle school, teachers used to say, 'Stephan is a historian,'" Dale-Shaw recalls. "'He's like a mastermind.'"
But the chance to pursue boxing didn't appear out of nowhere. His parents made that happen. They came from very little in north St. Louis, but they had each other. They got married in 1991, had two kids and moved to Spanish Lake. Brian Shaw worked in IT. Dale-Shaw worked in a chemical plant. Their goal, from the moment they got together, was to make sure their children could do whatever they wanted. They exposed them to all kinds of things. They enrolled Shaw in a Saint Louis University African heritage class. When Brian was employed at IBM, he took Shaw with him to work trips in Atlanta and Oklahoma City. His parents introduced him to every sport — basketball, the sport that earned him his nickname "Big Shot" because he made so many jump shots that his mom called him Shotgun.
"We gave them the best life that we could," Dale-Shaw says of raising Shaw and his siblings. "I'm a lovable mother. A lot of love."
Shaw, though, happened to be good at boxing. He knocked out his first amateur opponent at the age of 10. He won the national Silver Gloves Tournament twice.
Then, at 13, he quit. He felt like he had beaten everyone in his age group. He also felt pressure from such a long lineage of boxing.
"I kind of fell out of love with boxing," Shaw explains. "Because at the time, it didn't feel like something I loved, like I once did, or how I feel now. It felt like my dad was making me box."
For six years, Shaw didn't train, spar or fight. He graduated from Hazelwood Central, where he was a first baseman and made the honor roll. He enrolled at Harris-Stowe State University at 17, where he studied business and planned to become a sports broadcaster. He worked at McDonald's. He lived downtown with his parents in a loft, making music videos with his friends on their roof.
Shaw returned to boxing in 2011 after taking a trip with his father and grandfather to the Olympic trials. A year later, he miraculously made the national Olympic team as a practice player. In 2012, he was the runner-up in the National PAL Championships, one of the premier amateur boxing tournaments.
That's when Al Haymon called. Haymon, a legendary manager who is considered "the most powerful person in boxing" and "chief architect" of Floyd Mayweather's career, wanted to sign Shaw to a five-year professional contract with a $5,000 signing bonus. Shaw was working overnights at a Schnucks warehouse. He had never seen a check as large as $5,000.
"I'm like, 'Where do I sign?'" he remembers.
Shortly after Shaw inked a deal with Haymon, he steamrolled through a string of professional opponents, racking up an 8-0 record after he defeated Jonathan Rice in August 2016.
His life was coming together. He was working with Basheer Abdullah, a trainer in San Diego, who would organize a boot camp for Shaw in the weeks leading up to his fights. He'd gotten married and had his first son.
"I felt good," Shaw says. "I'm young. It's my first fight on TV. I shine. Dominated. And I wanted to show what they don't always see. I want to show, like, skills. You don't always have to knock a guy out. The knockout is just the cherry on top."
Despite his skills, he was making little money. Shaw knew this was part of the process, but that didn't make it easier. He brought home about $3,500 a fight — and he fought only three fights a year. He couldn't afford an apartment. Instead, around 24 years old, a professional athlete with a wife and a kid, he lived in his parents' house in Ferguson.
Then the fights stopped. By the beginning of 2017, Shaw hadn't fought anyone in five months. Boxers don't have a structured, unionized league that provides a permanent schedule or pay scale. Sometimes, fights just don't happen. Boxers' livelihoods lie largely out of their hands. They lie in the hands of promoters, TV networks, other fighters' schedules and world events, like the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Coming into this sport is just not an easy task," says Shaw's trainer, Abdullah. "It can be a lonely journey, especially if you don't have the resources behind you."
Shaw's current manager, McWater, who signed Shaw in late 2017, wouldn't even describe boxing as a sport.
"It's a lot like music," he says. "That's the best way to compare. Like 1960s music. You have to take everybody to [Motown Records executive] Berry Gordy, and he holds all the cards."
This isn't basketball, where the 29th-best player in the NBA makes $25 million a year. Even if they don't make the NBA, basketball players can compete overseas, netting hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes even millions. In boxing, most professionals bring home less than $5,000 per fight for years. Only a handful, fewer than 100 professional boxers in the world, bring home millions. There's little in-between, and there aren't any backup options, like overseas basketball. To reach millions of dollars and fame and comfort, it takes years of training every day, fighting in front of small crowds and scraping together enough money to survive. It also means staying undefeated — or really close to it — just to make a living wage.
"You have to just wait [for] your opportunities, be ready, beat whoever they put in front of you so you can get those opportunities. ... You have to keep winning," Shaw says. "It's different from basketball and football. A team can go 0-82, and the top guy on the salary can still make $40, $50 million."
As his fights dried up in 2016, Shaw got a job as a sparring partner for Deontay Wilder, the heavyweight champion of the world. But it only reminded Shaw, and the people around him, how good he was — and how little people cared. He could stand in the same ring with the heavyweight champion, but he couldn't make enough to purchase his own apartment.
Then his life really unraveled. His father, Brian, frustrated to see his son upset, called Haymon and left a curse-word-filled voicemail. Shortly after, Haymon's people called back. They got Brian's voicemail — and they cut Shaw from his contract.
"I was furious," Shaw says. "I was crushed. I cried. I went into my deepest depression. I went to a sunken place."
Shaw obsessively checked his phone, hoping it would ring with another opportunity. But it didn't. He didn't understand. He knew he was good at boxing, maybe one of the best in the world. Yet he had no money, no fame, no nothing. He was married and waiting on his second son, and suddenly, his source of income had been cut. He knew his dad had made a mistake, but had Shaw done something wrong? Did people not like him? Did promoters think he was unsellable? He wonders if he would have more attention if he was white and skinnier.
"Stress," he says. "I don't really know what's going on [with] my career." When asked what that looked like, he pauses. "Eating," he says. He pauses again and scoffs. "Eating. Eating. It's real tough. You know what I'm saying? Like for real."
Shaw ballooned from 260 to nearly 300 pounds. He to take edibles. He lost motivation to box, to spend time with his family, to live. "I didn't give a fuck about living or dying," he says.
When he did get back in the ring in May 2017, it was nearly one year after his last fight. He didn't have an agent, and he made only $1,500 in front of a sleepy St. Charles crowd. He got a job sparring with Stipe Miocic, a mixed martial arts fighter in Cleveland, but he made only $500 per week. He called home to his parents crying almost every day. He told them he might quit boxing.
He decided to keep fighting. But during his next bout, he showed up out of shape, taking six rounds to beat Joel Caudle, who is now 9-7.
At the end of the fight, boxing officials mandatory drug-tested him. It came back positive for THC. He was suspended for six months. It was unclear if Shaw would ever box again.
Shaw shows up 20 minutes late to lunch with a reporter at St. Louis Bread Co., apologizing when he walks in. He was on the phone with his manager, he says, trying to figure out his next fight. It keeps getting pushed back. He definitely, probably, will fight in January and hopefully, probably, maybe in November (Shaw has since signed a contract to fight in November).
Shaw is 17-0, but his career is still in constant flux. He says it doesn't bug him as much anymore — at least not like it used to. "I ain't really stressing too bad," he says.
Shaw is the most stylish person in Bread Co., with an all-white outfit — white sweatshirt, white shorts, white socks. He has earrings in each ear, and his hair is neatly trimmed, as always. His sweatshirt reads "Stephan 'Big Shot' Shaw" with a computerized drawing of his face. No one recognizes him.
Shaw's wife, Kendra Minnis-Shaw, who is wearing a "Ladybigshot" sweatshirt, sits down at a nearby table. She wasn't invited to the interview, but to invite Big Shot is to invite Lady Big Shot. They finish each other's sentences. They make TikTok videos together (Minnis-Shaw has over 300,000 followers). They go everywhere together.
So that's where the conversation starts — how their relationship began, back when he was 19 and she was 21, over a decade ago, two boxers at Wohl Community Center. They went to a boxing tournament, and then they went on a walking date downtown. They've been together ever since. Shaw's eyes twinkle as they talk about their relationship. "Love and boxing," he says.
"Just a sweet guy," Minnis-Shaw says. "We connected, we're like Bonnie — not even Bonnie and Clyde because they did things that weren't right. But we're the good Bonnie and Clyde. That's my best friend."
"Like a match made in heaven," Shaw adds, smiling.
She calls him "the most humble person."
"When you do get something big, you really are gonna be able to appreciate it," she says.
"That's why I stay down till I come up," he says.
"I love that about him. I really feel like if he gets millions of dollars, he's not gonna be above it, he's so conservative," she says, laughing.
"That's what struggle done taught me," he says.
Despite all of Shaw's struggles, his family has remained steady. Never even wavered. His wife, his kids, his mom, even his dad during their disagreements. He's been with Minnis-Shaw for nearly 10 years. He calls his parents every day, and he goes to dinner at their house every Sunday. He wakes up every morning to play catch with his kids before school.
After Shaw failed the drug test in May 2017, his new manager, McWater, paid for Shaw to start strength and conditioning training with ATT Evolution in Brentwood. It whipped Shaw into shape. He previously fought at 260 pounds. During his most recent fight, he weighed in at 236. Everyone says he's in the best shape of his life. He boxes every day, he runs almost every day, and he does strength and conditioning multiple times a week. His trainer says he doesn't know a heavyweight that works harder than Shaw these days.
Now that he is 17-0, Shaw has a deal with TopRank, one of the top promoters in the sport, and a TV contract with ESPN. He could fight for a heavyweight title in the coming years.
"He's in a situation where he can make $100,000 in one fight and a million in the next," McWater says. "He's at that point where his life could change drastically."
Shaw calls himself a "true overcomer" for still boxing today. He really overcame during the pandemic in 2020. With the world shut down and boxing matches cut, he dug himself into another deep depression — then he climbed out. In some ways, Shaw grew to understand the instability of boxing and focused on the parts of his life that he could control.
"I just found more sanctuary," he says, "in what I already have. ... I already have certain things that people that possess financial stability wish to have. And that's a wealth of love from my wife, my mother, my father, my kids."
On a chilly Thursday in October at 8 a.m., Shaw's two kids walk down the stairs from their two-bedroom apartment in Ferguson with bookbags and a football. He follows shortly behind in a wrinkly Cardinals hoodie. For the next 10 minutes, they play football catch in the middle of the street at their apartment complex. Shaw doesn't want his kids to box. He worries about the injuries. So every morning, his kids run fly routes up and down the road — and Shaw throws them dot after dot.
When the school bus arrives, Shaw calls after his kids. "Give me some," he says, suffocating them with a hug. He leads them to the bus, his wife right next to him. "I love y'all," he says.
After his kids are off to school, Shaw returns upstairs to his apartment. A YouTube clip of his last professional fight against Marquez, the one that ended in the first round, is playing loudly on the TV in his living room. African art from his parents covers the walls, and his championship amateur belts are laid out on a shelf with torn Muhammad Ali picture books. He leans forward on the couch, pulling his beard, watching highlights from his own professional and amateur fights, even highlights from his first fight when he was 10. He commentates and rewinds when people miss his favorite punches. "Boom. Boom. One-two," he says, watching a highlight video of his 20-year-old self over a Chief Keef song. A gigantic, giddy smile erupts across his face.
The frustration is still there. It's always there. Shaw is constantly oscillating between pride and bitterness when reflecting on his journey. He says that's normal. It's just part of boxing. But to spend time with Shaw now is to absorb an intoxicating amount of self-affirmation. He voices so much positivity, an overwhelming amount, that it seems staged. He preaches, constantly, about how he will capture a heavyweight championship belt, how no one in the world is better than him and how it all just comes from a mustard seed of faith. "It's only a matter of time," he says.
Maybe you need that bravado to survive in boxing. The word "faith" does hangs in his living room. Shaw really does believe, in full faith, that he will, in a few years, live in San Diego, with a heavyweight championship belt hanging on his wall. He can't let himself not believe this. Because to not believe this is to submit to the cruelty of boxing, to admit failure, to throw away all of those years of struggle. He can't do that. He won't let himself do that. And when those doubts creep in, that's when the frustrations rear their head again.
If others won't give him money or attention, fine. It will make him angry. But he won't stop boxing. He will continue to fight, watch his own highlights and remind himself that he is an amazing boxer. If boxing won't repay him, then he will repay himself, over and over and over and over again, until boxing has no choice but to grant him his childhood dreams.
"I'm gonna go get something up out of this," Shaw says. "And it's going to be world championships. Period. World championships. I'm gonna get myself out of being in a financial drought. It's only right. I worked too hard for it, and I stood the test of time."
But until then, until those world championships, he will play catch with his kids outside of his two-bedroom apartment and box in the elementary school basement, waiting.
Editor's note: A previous version of this story referred incorrectly to the community center where Stephan Shaw's grandfather was a boxing coach. Cochran Recreation Center was north of downtown St. Louis. Also, the story referred imprecisely to Al Haymon's role. He was Shaw's manager. We regret the errors.
