What Is Zuffa Boxing? Dana White's Promotion Explained

The March 2025 announcement described a new promotion launched by Turki Alalshikh and TKO "in partnership with Sela," a company owned by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund. TKO is the managing partner and supplies day-to-day operations, the UFC Performance Institute, production and marketing. Sela puts up the money. The Guardian reported in January 2026 that the split is 60 percent Sela, 40 percent TKO, a figure TKO has not confirmed.

TKO's own executives describe the arrangement as fee income with no downside. President Mark Shapiro told Sports Business Journal that TKO "received a roughly $10 million fee for serving as managing partner" and expects "to net, on average, another $10 million for every super fight we manage and promote," adding "TKO has no funding obligation." CFO Andrew Schleimer repeated it on the August 2026 earnings call: "We have no funding obligations, and we don't take financial risk." Boxing does not even get its own line in TKO's results.

For its first three months the project was loosely called TKO Boxing. On June 18, 2025, White told Sports Business Journal it would "officially be known as Zuffa Boxing." Zuffa was the company White and the Fertitta brothers used to buy the UFC in 2001.

The Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act of 2000 requires promoters to disclose revenue to fighters and keeps promoters separate from the sanctioning bodies that rank fighters and award belts. That separation is the opposite of the UFC model, where one company signs the fighters, makes the matches, publishes the rankings and owns the belt.

The Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revival Act, introduced in the House on July 23, 2025 by Reps. Brian Jack and Sharice Davids, creates a new category called Unified Boxing Organizations. A UBO could do all of those things itself under a separate set of rules, with a minimum purse, minimum medical coverage and other requirements attached. TKO called it a "bipartisan effort to bring innovation to the sport of boxing for the first time in 25 years." WBO president Gustavo Olivieri put the objection in one sentence: "If you control the ratings, the fighters and the title, you have absolute power, absolute control."

White's line is that nothing is being taken away. "There will be zero changes to the Muhammad Ali Act," he said in September 2025. "We are going to add on to it." In October he told fighters they could "stay exactly under the way it is now, or come bet on me."

The House Education and the Workforce Committee reported the bill 30 to 4 on January 21, 2026, after amendments capped promotional contracts at six years and raised the minimum purse from $150 to $200 per scheduled round and the medical minimum from $25,000 to $50,000. The full House passed it by voice vote on March 24, 2026.

In the Senate, an April 22, 2026 Commerce Committee hearing heard Oscar De La Hoya call it "a fundamental shift in power that, if enacted, would put corporate profits first and fighters second," and Nico Ali Walsh say that in its current form "it should not have my grandfather's name on it." Sens. Ted Cruz and Jacky Rosen introduced the Senate version, S. 5188, on July 30, 2026. It applies the six-year contract cap, the $200 per round minimum and the $50,000 medical minimum to every promoter, not only UBOs, adds a $15,000 accidental death benefit and requires UBOs to publish their ranking criteria. Ali Walsh now supports it. The Commerce Committee passed it on September 16, 2026. It still needs the full Senate, a reconciled version and a signature. As of today it is not law.

Shapiro said the goal is roughly 200 fighters under contract and 12 to 16 events a year plus two to four super fights. The headline signings so far: Jai Opetaia, the undefeated cruiserweight champion, announced January 17, 2026 as the "biggest signing to date"; Conor Benn, signed February 20 on a one-fight deal that The Ring reported paid $15 million, then extended to five fights through 2028 on April 17; and Shakur Stevenson, the undefeated four-division champion, on July 9, 2026. Stevenson's first words: "Line them up, one by one."

The rest of the roster includes Edgar Berlanga, Richardson Hitchins, Jose Valenzuela, Callum Walsh, Efe Ajagba, Chris Billam-Smith, Jason Moloney, Johnny Fisher and Kayla Allen, the first woman signed. Ryan Garcia fought Benn under the Zuffa banner while Golden Boy sent a cease-and-desist letter; whether Garcia has signed a full promotional deal has not been confirmed. Oleksandr Usyk's manager said in July that he was "in direct discussions with Zuffa Boxing at the highest level." No deal has been announced.

On September 29, 2025, Paramount+ became the exclusive US, Canada and Latin America home of Zuffa Boxing, starting with 12 cards in 2026 and select events simulcast on CBS. Neither side disclosed the value. The Guardian reported roughly $100 million a year over five years; treat that as a media report. Paramount separately pays the UFC $7.7 billion over seven years, so the two properties now share a streaming home. Super fights go elsewhere: Fury against Arslanbek Makhmudov aired on Netflix, as did Canelo Alvarez against Terence Crawford.

The monthly Apex shows are the development league White described in 2025 as a boxing version of the Contender Series: Walsh beat Carlos Ocampo by decision on January 23, Ajagba stopped Charles Martin in four on February 15, Opetaia shut out Brandon Glanton on March 8 for the first Zuffa Boxing world cruiserweight belt, and Shane Mosley Jr. stopped Serhii Bohachuk in six on May 10. Berlanga stopped Steven Butler in seven at Madison Square Garden's Infosys Theater on July 26.

The bigger nights: Fury's shutout of Makhmudov in London on April 11, 2026, with Benn beating Regis Prograis on the undercard; Billam-Smith's seventh-round stoppage of Ryan Rozicki in Bournemouth on June 6; Aaron McKenna and Etinosa Oliha for a vacant middleweight world title in Dublin on August 8; and Garcia's knockout of Benn at 1:25 of round two on September 12 for the WBC welterweight title, in front of 18,855 and a gate of $8,030,075. Opetaia stopped Noel Mikaelian in nine on the same card. Next up is Fisher against Michael Pirotton at the Copper Box in London on September 26.

Note what happened with the belts. White said in September 2025 that "there will be a Zuffa belt, and there will be a Ring belt" and he would "not recognize any of the other sanctioning bodies." By January he was saying "you can have both belts," and Zuffa fighters have since fought for WBC and IBF titles. That is a work in progress, as he put it himself.

Bob Arum, in June 2026: "Dana White really is a cancer for boxing because you come in and you want to get rid of all the sanctioning bodies." De La Hoya, in July: "Today, Zuffa Boxing is the Trojan Horse. Once they monopolize the sport like they want to, Zuffa will pay fighters peanuts, exactly like the UFC." Eddie Hearn: "No fighter with any ambition wants to fight for a Zuffa Boxing belt." Roy Jones Jr.: "You can't come and treat boxing like the UFC. There's a ceiling on their pay." On the other side, the California State Athletic Commission voted 6 to 0 to support the bill, and Lonnie Ali endorsed it.

The money on the table right now is real. Boxing Scene quoted an agent saying "these guys are offering good money" and another describing a verbal offer that nearly doubled a fighter's previous world-title purse. Benn's reported $15 million for one fight speaks for itself. De La Hoya's counter is that Zuffa is "overpaying the household names in order to look pretty and gain credibility."

The contracts are the other half. The Guardian's January 2026 report on Zuffa's deal terms described the promoter choosing opponents, the right to cut fighters after losses, fighters paying their own exam and testing costs, and a revenue share in the range of 17 to 20 percent, in line with what the UFC's own antitrust case showed UFC fighters receive. Treat those details as reporting. What is not in dispute is the direction: one promoter, one ranking, one belt, and an act of Congress to make it legal.