Image credit: @johnnyfisher1 via Instagram
Zuffa Boxing isn’t delivering. The reemergence of Dana White’s boxing vehicle in 2025, which first entered the zeitgeist following McGregor/Mayweather’s bout in 2017, caused both excitement and angst amongst boxing fans.
White’s proper entrance into the world of professional boxing comes following his epiphany that the current wild-west boxing promotional landscape was ‘broken’ and would benefit from a centralized promotional power, similar to the UFC for MMA.
He probably also saw the potential for a pound note, or two.
A joint venture backed by Sela, and with the support of the UFC’s parent company TKO, Zuffa has some serious financial fire power.
However, we’ve seen this film before – a new player enters the game, throws some cash around and makes some noise before inevitably falling by the wayside. What makes Zuffa different is they’re fronted by Dana White, a man who has already impressively colonised a combat sport. Is there anyone better positioned or qualified to lead a disruptor promotion?
White has consistently asked to be judged by their body of work after a year. In doing so, it’s clear to see that Zuffa isn’t landing any power punches just yet. Why is that?
The Initial Zuffa Offering
A league, made up exclusively of elite fighters. Only one world champion for each weight class, where the existing sanctioning bodies’ championships would not be acknowledged and would be disregarded. The politics of the sport were to be eradicated.
It was an extremely hostile go-to-market.
How would they achieve this? The widely-believed approach was cold, hard cash. Money does talk in every language, after all. Much of the discussion amongst the boxing media was evaluating whether or not Zuffa would simply bulldoze the opposition financially. It hasn’t yet worked out like that.
What Zuffa has been delivering since their inception is unfortunately so far away from what they proposed when they entered the market. So far, they have failed to land a sufficient volume of elite fighters and their league format hasn’t been mentioned in many, many months.
They have crowned two of their own champions, with Jai Opetaia winning their Cruiserweight belt and Aaron McKenna picking up the Middleweight strap. The remaining weight classes remain without a champion. This is representative of the wider Zuffa problem.
If they were to truly take over boxing, Zuffa would need to be able to regularly capture the interest of the casual audience. Why would casual fans in mass buy into a fight with no obvious reward for the winner? If the winner of a bout won the championship, or bettered their league position, it gives fans a reason to get invested.
What was Efe Ajagba’s reward for stopping Charles Martin at Zuffa Boxing 03 in February? It’s still not clear, and the bout was nearly 7 months ago.
One would imagine that Ajagba’s win will have improved his favourability within the promotion, which should facilitate a higher-profile opponent at a later date.That doesn’t really do much for the fans.
There are, of course, further issues too.
5 Things Zuffa Haven’t Got Right
There should be no denying that much of the criticism and praise of Zuffa has been coloured by the commenters’ general feeling towards Dana White. It seems to be inescapable from both sides, whether it be die-hard Matchroom Boxing fans on Twitter or TalkSport presenters who allegedly don’t want to risk upsetting Dana White and losing their free tickets.
The Lack of Elite Stars
What constitutes an ‘elite’ boxer? It’s subjective really. If you were to try and quantify it, you could potentially argue that anyone ranked in positions one to five by the Ring Magazine for their weight class is elite. I’d argue that the Ring Magazine has subjectively ranked them in the first instance, so this doesn’t really stand.
An elite boxer is one operating at the top of their game, who makes you feel something when they’re going about their work in the ring. Jai Opetaia is an elite boxer. He is also, at the time of writing, Zuffa’s only Ring Magazine champion.
Outside of him, who else is there?
For me, Chris Billam-Smith is an elite boxer. The former WBO Cruiserweight champion is an absolute warrior and a great watch in the ring. Due to Shakur Stevenson’s abrupt departure, that concludes the list of Zuffa’s elite fighters at 2.
Conor Benn is not an elite fighter.
Conor Benn
Speaking of The Destroyer, Conor Benn represents an elephant in the room for Zuffa and UFC. Zuffa being able to prise him away from Matchroom, in doing so hurting a rival promoter, sent shockwaves around the boxing world. Benn had been with Matchroom since turning professional in 2016, spending a decade with the outfit. Matchroom even stuck by him through his adverse finding of a prohibitive substance, for which Benn had to surrender his UK boxing license.
Benn shares a problem with fellow Brit and Zuffa fighter Johnny Fisher in that his status is likely greater than his skill. It’s a great problem to have, allowing them both to earn good money relative to those of a similar skillset around them.
The problem is Zuffa sprung a reported $15 million to break Benn’s relationship with Matchroom and secure a one fight deal. They then, rather hastily, decided to use this one fight on the undercard of Fury/Makhmudov in which Benn laboured to a points victory over an imminently-retiring Richard Prograis. The $15 million figure has since caused problems for TKO, being ridiculed in the boxing world and causing significant unrest amongst their UFC fighters who are paid far less.
Ryan Garcia’s emphatic early stoppage of Benn in his next fight didn’t help, although Benn is not at fault for jumping in fearlessly against a classy operator who’s levels above him.
Unclear Stance on Traditional Championship Belts
Death, taxes and Jai Opetaia chatting about wanting to become undisputed at Cruiserweight are the only things that are certain in life. So it did raise questions when the IBF Cruiserweight champion signed with Zuffa, who originally planned to completely ignore the traditional championship belts.
When quizzed on this after the signing, Opetaia didn’t seem to think it’d be an issue. The IBF had different ideas and stripped him.
The move to Zuffa did seem to make sense for the Australian, who felt that his previous promoter had taken him as far as they could and that their relationship had reached a natural conclusion.
The IBF came to the decision due to their own rules, specifically Rule 5.H which states that if a champion fights in an unsanctioned contest – their title must be declared vacant. Opetaia fought Brandon Glanton to win the Zuffa Cruiserweight Championship, which the IBF do not recognise.
The problem is that since this, Opetaia has won a WBA regular belt in a bout in which he also successfully defended his Zuffa belt on a Zuffa card.
So are they working with the existing sanctioning bodies or not?
Lack of U.S. Shows in 2026
As of the end of October, Zuffa does not have any more shows announced for the U.S. throughout the rest of the year.
With their last show being Zuffa Boxing 09, which was towards the back end of July, it’ll be at least 5 months between their U.S. shows if they put one on in January 2027. They did co-promote the Garcia/Benn event with Golden Boy Promotions in September.
There is a dire need for a boxing revival in the U.S. If you made a list of the top 10 greatest boxers of all time, no nation would be more represented than America. The country has a rich boxing history, which unfortunately is in danger of becoming just that – history.
With White’s massive presence within the U.S. and a gap in that market, fight fans had hoped that Zuffa could have launched an American boxing renaissance. It’s not quite worked out like that yet.
Eddie Hearn is Winning his Personal war with Dana White
Hearn and White’s personal back-and-forth seems to have reignited the Englishman. He and Matchroom are likely to be major players in the sport for many years to come, but 2026 had the potential to be a damaging year for their boxing operations.
Katie Taylor has retired, they’ve lost two steady UK ticket sellers in Benn and Johnny Fisher to Zuffa and it seems that Anthony Joshua is only one loss away from wrapping up.
Defeat to long-term rival Tyson Fury in December would be following a serious beatdown at the hands of Daniel Dubois, a win over Jake Paul in a mismatched gimmick fight and a very unconvincing win over then-unknown Kristian Prenga.
And yet despite their Great British and Irish offering diminishing throughout the year, Hearn is undoubtedly winning his personal war against White. White’s bizarre comments in press conferences haven’t helped this, alongside Zuffa’s wider lack of big fights.
Furthermore, as it has become more apparent that White and Zuffa are not promoting Fury/Joshua, White’s non-committal hints that he’d be significantly involved in the show have provided Hearn with serious ammunition.
Dana White has reignited Eddie Hearn. God help us all.
In Defence of Zuffa
They are right in much of their criticism of the boxing ecosystem.
The influence of Turki Al-Sheikh has facilitated many bouts that before his arrival felt too difficult to deliver, it’s been great for fight fans. This has also been aided by the rise of DAZN, who to be fair do feel like the global home of boxing with multiple promoters partnered with the platform.
Putting these points to one side, issues still remain.
Boxers still give it large to each other on social media but don’t fight each other. There are too many belts. Some fighters are still inactive. Has anyone heard from Adam Azim, recently?
Zuffa’s initial offering, if realised, would’ve resolved many of these issues. Conceptually, they were sound although it does feel as if they’re going to continue operating as their contemporary promoters.
Their English Footprint
Zuffa has put on 2 solid UK shows this year. Their first show in England’s controversial build up, due to contractual conflicts between Zuffa and Ben Shallom’s Boxxer outfit, was massively overshadowed by a barnstorming main event between hometown fighter Chris Billam-Smith and Ryan Rozicki.
CBS looked slick and powerful, Rozicki demonstrated a granite chin. It made for a great fight.
Following that, the start of November saw Johnny Fisher make his Zuffa debut. Fisher defeated Michael Pirotton by majority decision at the CopperBox in London. Despite reported disappointing ticket sales, the atmosphere was strong during the main event.
Fisher’s performance did garner much criticism, but personally it’s what I wanted to see from Fisher following a shaky victory over Ivan Balaz in his previous bout – he went 12 rounds, and I felt he was in control of the fight throughout it. Many see it as a foregone conclusion that Fisher won’t reach world level, it seems to be that the narrative now is whether or not he can pick up the Lonsdale belt. A prize worth fighting for. This fight has helped move him closer to that.
The One Thing No One is Talking About
Zuffa Boxing 01 took place in January of this year, where Callum Walsh defeated Carlos Ocampo on points. They are less than 1 year old.
No promoter has ever had a higher profile first year and gone on to have a long-term impact within the sport. As previously mentioned, White has consistently asked for Zuffa to be judged on their body of work after a year. If they’re being judged against existing big players in the game as they’d most likely like to be, they’ve underdelivered.
To judge them in isolation, not against Matchroom or Golden Boy, as a promotion that has been putting on shows for a year, they’ve done okay.
One key thing to bear in mind is that as time goes on, more and more top-level fighters’ current deals will expire. These signings will be key for Zuffa to make if they’re truly to ever take over.
Will they ever ‘fix’ boxing? It doesn’t look likely.
You can’t govern a sport that doesn’t wish to be governed.
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