One and done and many more.
Much was made about Conor Benn’s one-fight, $15 million deal with Zuffa Boxing that prompted mixed reviews from across the boxing and mixed martial arts (MMA) community, in particular Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) veterans who were not pleased with the massive payout he was receiving.
This, despite the fact that Turki Alalshikh is fronting the cash, not UFC.
But that one-fight deal has now been turned into a multi-fight partnership as UFC CEO, Dana White, announced
that Zuffa Boxing has locked down the services of Benn for the foreseeable future.
“Conor and I just signed a new deal here after his one-fight deal. We are excited to have him,” he said. “We are ready to put on some big fights.”
As for Benn, he has been very happy with the new partnership which made it easy for him to continue with the upstart boxing promotion.
“I just signed a new multi-fight deal and I am very, very excited. Our visions are aligned and our goals remain the same, which is to get that world title, but more importantly to get people the fights they want to see, to give people the mega-fights.”
White and Benn appeared on ESPN’s “First Take” shortly after the news to further talk about their blossoming partnership.
One of those mega-fights could come against Ryan Garcia, as Benn was recently linked to a potential showdown against “King Ry” for later this year. Benn is coming off a unanimous decision win over Regis Prograis two weeks ago (highlights here), though the winning performance didn’t convince everyone that he warranted such a large contract as it received mostly negative reviews across the board.
Nevertheless, Dana and Turki apparently saw more than enough to justify a contract extension, though details regarding future payouts were not disclosed.
