TKO Group Holdings — the parent company to the UFC — officially kicked off a move into boxing by promoting the showdown between Canelo Alvarez and Terence Crawford this past weekend in Las Vegas, but that’s merely the first step with much grander plans in mind.
The launch of Zuffa Boxing is coming in 2026 with hopes that the new venture can use UFC-style promotion to build a roster, create rankings and championship belts for the fighters under contract. A lot of those plans hinge on the approval of the Muhammad
Ali American Boxing Revival Act — a new law proposed in Congress that effectively alters current rules that prevent promoters from serving as managers and protects fighters from exploitative practices when it comes to contracts, salaries and other key issues involved athletes competing in the sport.
Matt Brown, who spent 16 years competing in the UFC, believes that law being approved clears the way for a promotion like Zuffa Boxing to potentially put a stranglehold on the sport, especially where the fighters are concerned.
“The big issue is what they’ve done with the UFC is they’ve monopolized the sport,” Brown said on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer. “This is why you see guys we’ll say a couple of weeks ago when [Carlos] Prates was begging for his friend to get a shot in the UFC. You see guys like me, I’m guilty of it, like ‘can I get that $50,000 bonus, please? Please master?’ That’s not the way it’s supposed to work and the reason it doesn’t work that way in boxing — you’ve never heard a single boxer in my lifetime beg the promoter for anything — because of the thing called the Ali Act, which the UFC is trying to revise, which actually means destroy.
“It’s not going to be a good thing. People think it’s going to be a good thing but when you have a single entity controlling rankings, controlling titles, that’s not a good thing for boxing.”
The UFC is currently facing several antitrust lawsuits based around allegations that the organization operates as a monopoly over the sport of MMA.
Amid disclosures and discovery provided by evidence, UFC financial records showed that athletes typically receive between 16 to 20 percent of the total revenue earned by the promotion. That’s in stark contrast to leagues like the NFL and NBA where athletes are contractually obligated to earn around 50 percent of the revenue, which largely comes due to collective bargaining agreements made with unions.
A huge part of the argument against the UFC is how the promotion is able to lock up athletes in longterm contracts while also maintaining almost unchallenged control over the sport because of the size and reach of the organization. Many of the UFC’s business practices when it comes to exclusive contracts, rankings and titles wouldn’t be allowed in boxing but that changes if this new proposal is signed into law.
“The UFC is making good money,” Brown said. “The fighters are making, you could say making millions of dollars is making good money, which it is, but when you’re making someone else $100 million and you’re making $10 million, you’re not making good money.
“When there’s a single entity with a monopoly controlling who gets that payday, that’s when it becomes a problem.”
Brown points specifically to a couple of phrases UFC CEO Dana White uses often when addressing athletes competing in the promotion that he didn’t mind while he was competing but later realized the troubling reality behind those words.
“When Dana said this is not a career, this is an opportunity — that is so wrong,” Brown said. “Looking back on that, I’m like that is so f*cking wrong. Basically, you have an opportunity to use the UFC brand that we’re going to give you to push yourself. I can’t hate on it. It created opportunity for me. I’m sitting here doing this podcast because I was a UFC fighter, not because I’m the most interesting man in the world. I get that. But it should be able to be a career. You should be able to make retirement money if you’re that good of a fighter.
“Dana also uses this — you eat what you kill. That is so false. You eat what we give you. If Conor [McGregor] goes out and sells 5 million pay-per-views, he doesn’t get what he killed. He promotes the shit out of it, does all the media, he doesn’t get what he killed. He gets what the UFC says you can have, which might be $10 million while the UFC takes $80 or $100 million. How is that eating what you kill? That’s Dana eating what you killed.”
Of course, Brown understands the frustration that many boxing fans feel when it comes to missing out on some of the biggest fights in the sport because warring promoters can’t come to an agreement on certain matchups.
But he believes the problem far outweighs the solution when it comes to bringing UFC-style promotion to boxing.
“From the fans, they see all the bullshit in boxing, and they’re like ‘they’ll come in and fix it!’ That’s what they’re trying to pitch to you, that they’re going to come in and fix it,” Brown said. “You’ll get to see the fights you want. But ultimately when you break it down, there’s no way that the pay stays the same.
“Currently, the way boxing works and the reason Terence [Crawford] got $50 million and Canelo got $150 million, which was the [rumored salaries] that I saw. I don’t know if that’s totally accurate, I think that’s right. It’s because the promoters are fighting for the boxers. That’s because of the Ali Act. With this revision act, they want what the UFC is. Fighters begging for the promoters or working for the promoters. In boxing, the promoters work for the boxers.”
With Zuffa Boxing poised to launch early next year, Brown can’t say for certain what’s going to happen to the sport, especially if the new rules proposed in Congress actually gets signed into law.
Brown just knows from personal experience that as much as he praises the UFC for becoming the biggest and best combat sports promotion on Earth, that doesn’t always end up benefitting the athletes under contract.
“I always have to preface this with one thing: I’m not hating on the UFC,” Brown said. “I don’t hate Dana White or the UFC. They built a brilliant business.
“It’s not a good model for the athletes, for the fighters that are working their asses off. That’s really what we are. We’re a bunch a fighting dogs begging for scraps.”
