Fighting Words: The biggest shock about O’Shaquie Foster is it’s no longer a shock that he wins
O’Shaquie Foster has overcome so much, and accomplished so much, that he’s no longer an underdog story. He’s a success story, with more success perhaps to come.
O’Shaquie Foster has overcome so much, and accomplished so much, that he’s no longer an underdog story. He’s a success story, with more success perhaps to come.
That is a big difference from the fighter who was looking at the possibility of spending years in prison. The fighter who suffered two losses in his first 12 pro bouts. The fighter who had to come from behind on the scorecards in the final round to retain his world title. And the fighter whose first reign ended with a disputed decision.
His success story continued on Saturday, when he retained his WBC title with a decision victory over Raymond Ford in front of a supportive crowd in Houston, Texas. Foster may not yet be seen as the top junior lightweight in the world, not when Emanuel Navarrete has two of the three other world titles. But Foster has to be seen as one of the best, and deserving of being in with more of the best, be it at 130 pounds or above.
Yes, it’s a big step up to go from outpointing a good former titleholder like Ford to challenging a great pound-for-pound talent such as Shakur Stevenson, who confronted Foster in the ring afterward. Yet if we’ve learned one thing from Foster’s life and career, it’s that he shouldn’t be written off.
He should most definitely be written about. What a compelling story Foster continues to be.
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Boxing is a brutal sport. Full stop. It does a lot of damage. But it also does a lot of good. We often hear about how boxing helped fighters from troubled families and troubled neighborhoods, how boxing saved fighters from the streets.
For O’Shaquie Foster, however, the streets nearly took him away from boxing.
The details have been told by many before, including Jeremy Herriges, Keith Idec, Mark Kriegel, Kelsey McCarson, Joe Santoliquito, Ryan Songalia and Declan Warrington. Here are some of the toughest events that Foster has fought through:
2005: Foster’s mother dies
Foster was 12 years old at the time. “I remember getting back to the house and she was on the bed. She told us she had like two weeks. She died, like, the next day,” Foster told Kriegel in 2024. “The day of her funeral, I actually went and fought the Golden Gloves. Literally, the day of.”
2011: Foster doesn’t make the U.S. Olympic Boxing Team
Foster, just shy of his 18th birthday and also spending his athletic time as a high school basketball player, competed in the U.S. Olympic Boxing Trials in 2011. The tournament would narrow down potential team members for the 2012 Games in London, England.
Foster won three of his five bantamweight bouts. He edged Antonio Nieves (who would go on to challenge Naoya Inoue in the pros); Tramaine Williams (who went on to lose to Angelo Leo in a junior featherweight title bout in the pros); and then was outscored by Joseph “JoJo” Diaz Jr. That led to a rematch betweeen Foster and Williams. Foster won again and got a second shot at Diaz, only to fall just short. Diaz traveled to London. Foster remained home as an alternate.
2015 and 2016: Foster loses twice as a pro boxer
Foster turned pro in September 2012, about a month and a half after the Olympics concluded. In November 2015, in Foster’s ninth professional fight, he dropped an eight-round unanimous decision to the 6-1 Samuel Teah. After bouncing back with two wins, Foster suffered another setback in July 2016, receiving the short end of an eight-round split decision against the 12-1-1 Rolando Chinea.
“My closest cousin died like four days before my second loss,” Foster told Herriges in 2019. “I had problems with my promoter. It put a lot of stress on me. I just wasn’t focused. [Foster’s cousin’s] name is Jimmy Franks. We grew up since, like, babies. He’s my first cousin. He got killed out here in Houston. He got shot in the head.”
2017: Foster is arrested and jailed
Foster remained out of the ring for some time after the loss to Chinea. And in March 2017, police in Orange, Texas, arrested the 23-year-old Foster and accused him of a shooting that injured a 24-year-old man.
“I was in the streets heavy at that time. My homies, they were showing me real love,” Foster told Kriegel, noting that his grandmother died in early 2017. “I was mad at the world. I didn’t really care about nothing for real. I started taking pills. I really had became like a druggie. I ain’t really feel like I had nothing left.”
Two major moments in jail changed Foster’s trajectory.
That August, Foster and other inmates were able to watch the broadcast of Terence Crawford winning the undisputed junior welterweight championship against Julius Indongo.
“Something just clicked in my mind where I just said, ‘I can do this,’” Foster told Idec in 2023. “I’ve always been one of the most talented guys in the amateurs. I just got away from my work ethic. I knew if I started putting in the work that, you know, the results would show.”
Later that month, Hurricane Harvey hit Texas and left the jail, and its inmates, without electricity and stuck for several days in heat and darkness.
“I was sitting there and thinking about my options,” Foster told Warrington in 2024. “I knew I could be in and out of here for the rest of my life and burn my dreams. But I understand that boxing has a time span and it ain’t something you can do forever, so being locked up changed my mindset. I knew I needed to give boxing all I had before it was too late.”
Foster had been charged with attempted murder and was looking at the possibility of a lengthy prison term. But the criminal charges were lessened, and Foster was released on probation.
“It changed my whole life,” Foster told McCarson in 2019. “I stayed away from the hood. I didn’t go to my hometown for like a year. It was a while before I went back, and I just changed my whole environment.”
2021: Inactivity amid a promotional dispute
Two more episodes could have derailed Foster’s career. By September 2018, he’d won three fights since being released from jail and returning to the ring. But days before a match with unbeaten junior lightweight Jon Fernandez, Foster was taken into police custody on an old charge, according to Idec. Foster was freed in time to make it to Oklahoma, widely outpointing Fernandez for a lower-tier WBC belt.
“If I didn’t make that fight, who knows where we would be today in the boxing world?” Foster told Idec last December. “Because that fight, that was my first title I fought for as a pro. And then that title got me ranked in the top 10 in the WBC. So, going from nothing, when a year before I was just getting out of jail, to being in the top 10 in the world, it was unbelievable. If I didn’t make it to that fight, and they held me a little longer, everything would’ve been different.”
But in March 2021, a dispute between Foster and his promoter at the time, DiBella Entertainment, led to the company filing a lawsuit against the fighter. Foster wouldn’t fight at all that year.
The upswings finally came in Foster’s life and career
Things began to improve for Foster. There were still plenty of ups and downs, though.
November 2021: Foster signed with Probellum despite the ongoing legal process with DiBella.
March 2022: Foster fought for the first time in 16 months, earning a wide nod over the previously unbeaten Muhammad Yaqubov.
January 2023: Probellum shut down in the United States, given accusations about the company’s connections to organized crime kingpin Daniel Kinahan.
February 2023: Foster landed a headline spot in Showtime — and his first title shot. He captured the vacant WBC belt at 130 pounds by giving Rey Vargas his first (and still only) pro defeat.
October 2023: For his first title defense, Foster headed to Mexico to face Eduardo “Rocky” Hernandez. The bout used open scoring, so Foster knew he was behind on the scorecards after the eighth round. In the 12th, Foster floored Hernandez twice and got the stoppage he desperately needed with just seconds to go.
November 2023: Foster signs with Top Rank.
2024: In February, Foster dropped Abraham Nova in the 12th round and left with the split decision win. But he lost his title that July, his third defense ending with a split decision awarded to Robson Conceicao, a verdict that Foster (and others) felt should’ve gone his way. Foster and Conceicao met in a rematch that November, and this time Foster got the split nod, regaining the WBC belt to start his second reign.
2025: A planned fight with Stephen Fulton was delayed multiple times. They finally met this past December on the undercard of Isaac “Pitbull” Cruz vs. Lamont Roach Jr. But Fulton came in two pounds overweight. With the frustrations of the year likely on his mind, Foster went forward with the bout anyway and impressed against the two-division titleholder, winning a wide decision.
May 2026: Foster defended against Raymond Ford, a former featherweight titleholder who had moved up to 130 pounds after losing a narrow split decision to Nick Ball in June 2024. Ford was on a three-fight winning streak. Foster triumphed via majority decision.
Foster is now 32 years old and riding high. He has earned respect for what he has overcome and how he has done it.
Family tragedies. Early losses. Legal troubles, both criminal and civil. Disappointing results in the amateurs and pros. Judges that seemed intent on robbing him, or who actually wound up doing so. Being the underdog in his boxing matches. Overcoming the odds in the ring and in life.
Yes, Shakur Stevenson would be a betting favorite in a match with Foster. The same would likely be true to a lesser extent for Navarrete, who has the IBF and WBO titles. (Anthony Cacace holds the WBA belt.) There are other fights that could be made at lightweight, including against Roach.
Foster is now 4-1 against fighters who held world titles at the time or had previously done so. He’s 6-1 in world title fights. No matter what the sportsbooks might say, no matter what fans and the media might predict, Foster can’t be written off or discounted.
It should no longer be a shock to us when he wins. It’s just a question of which fighter he’ll try to shock next.