Reflections – Zuffa huffa and puffa, but will they blow the house down?
Or is Dana White, Mercutio, the tragic hero in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet? He famously turned on his deathbed and shouted a plague on both your houses, meaning the Capulets and the Montagues.
Dana White seems to be in a similar position claiming that he is going to bring down not one, not two, but the five sanctioning bodies, and the Capulets and Montagues of Matchroom, Queensberry and potentially any other promotional company in his way.
White has launched his boxing intervention with a low-key evening of combat sports in the US, as he hopes to bring a plague from his experience in building the UFC down upon all of the sanctioning bodies to create a sixth with Turki Al-Sheikh and Tom Loeffler. They hope to offer a new way to become a world champion.
Or is White just a big bad wolf standing outside the little piggy’s house waiting to huff and puff and blow the house down, but ultimately, he is going to be unsuccessful?
He was surrounded at his first event by the head of WWE and Loeffler himself, Vice President of the new organisation, and they all have a pedigree and an energy that is difficult to ignore.
It is also difficult to ignore their signing of Jai Opetaia, the unbeaten IBF and Ring Magazine cruiserweight world champion. Difficult to swipe away because this is not just a marquee signing but because it questions their very ethos.
Are they truly serious about replacing the sanctioning bodies and having their own belt or will they play the same game as everybody else and allow Jai Opetaia an opportunity to become the unified boxing champion of the world? For that is what, having signed to become one of their fighters, he spoke of as his ambition. Zuffa said they were not going to play those games, but then again DAZN said they would never do Pay-Per-View…
And so, favoured fighter Callum Walsh of Ireland beat Carlos Ocampo on points in the very first night of Zuffer Boxing.
To be fair to the men behind the idea, there are good things being said. They ascribe to the idea, like in UFC, that if you are a fighter on their roster and you have a defeat that doesn’t mean that you’re going to be removed. Competitive fights are going to be put on, looking at the quality of the undercard rather than the quantity.
The atmosphere at their first show, a 500-seat venue did not set the heather alight for atmosphere but neither did Saudi Arabia nor Monaco but both have become staples within the boxing calendar. Little should be taken from the first event in terms of atmosphere inside the arena but the atmosphere it’s created amongst promoters is much more interesting.
Whilst Frank Warren and Queensberry have kept most of their powder dry and BOXXER only seem to be consulted when there is something for them to say, Eddie Hearn of Matchroom has never been shy in having anything to say about anything at all.
In fact, I would not have been surprised had he turned in one side of the Middle East peace deal or bobbed around in Ukraine as a special envy, given the way in which Donald Trump likes to pull people in from all walks of life to support and help his land grabs globally.
Hearn’s serious view seems to be, bring it on.
However, the major stumbling block for Zuffa is the Ali Act which protects boxers and does not fit Zuffa’s ambition to offer their own versions of world titles. Dana White is looking to audaciously overturn the Act so that Zuffa Boxing is similar to the UFC.
In UFC, he has created a huge machine and though there are other organisations out there who operate in the mixed martial arts field, UFC is the kingpin.
There has been a lack of clarity like that in boxing, as each of the sanctioning bodies having their own issues and problems.
The WBA, for example, find themselves out of the records as BoxRec have removed them entirely from their seedings and records.
Boxing has only itself to blame.
Of all five sanctioning bodies, the IBO seems to have the fairest system in place, but not many people like fairness within boxing, so it tends to be the junior partner in amongst the five titans.
The green and gold of the WBC, holds a special place in some fighter’s esteem, like Conor Benn, suggesting that’s the one he wants because his dad held it.
Then there is the contempt some have shown for the system – how many times has a boxer put a belt in a bin or relinquished a title for this reason or that?
Shall Zuffa boxing make it that different? In this new dawn, however money talks. The money and power behind Zuffa boxing is completely and utterly unignorable. Whether he will bring a plague down and not just two but up to five houses, those being the sanctioning bodies is to be seen. He is certainly huffing and puffing but if the signing of Jai Opataia demonstrates one thing it is that the politics of boxing is something that he cannot ignore. Opetaia’s dream is to become a unified champion. That can’t be done by simply winning Zuffa boxing’s own title. That has to be done by winning all of the other belts. That means that White has to find a way to negotiate with other promoters just like it was done in the old days.
How that will go down, what will happen with it, we will hopefully find out as time goes on.
