According to the Muhammad Ali Act as it exists today, boxing promoters are not allowed to have their own championship belts. But that didn’t stop Dana White from showing off the Zuffa Boxing belt during a promo for the new boxing organization.
After weeks of silence had many wondering what (if anything) parent company TKO had up their sleeves, the promotional assault for the debut Zuffa Boxing event on Friday January 23rd has begun. That means we finally have a lineup for the first event, which is
set to go down at the newly re-branded Meta Apex.
We might get a promotional ad starring ‘Z01’ headliner Callum Walsh, for now you’ll have to settle for a promo starring none other than visionary Dana White.
“Boxing is the purest form of sport,” Max Kellerman declares gravely over photos of legendary boxing fights. “It is the literal imposition of one man’s will on another. And for that reason, it’s had mass appeal since the the dawn of time, really. This is an international pastime that dates back to the nineteenth century. It is intertwined in pop culture like no other sport in the history of civilization. It’s embedded in our DNA as a physical art form endemic to the human condition.”
“That’s why boxing has produced so many heroes, so many historic moments, and so many unforgettable experiences. But in modern age, boxing has lost its aura. It’s been pushed to the margins.”
The camera cuts to footage of Dana White walking out into a boxing arena with a wry smile on his face.
“Why is that?” Kellerman asks. “Maybe because there’s never been an architect, a visionary who’s been able to harness its power and present it the way it should be presented, is there someone who can take up the mantle for the greatest sport in human history? There’s only one way to find out.”
In one hand is a Zuffa Boxing belt, which technically isn’t something Zuffa Boxing is legally allowed to promote until a proposed Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act is passed by the U.S. Congress. And while that seems like an inevitability given the impressive political connections of both White and his bosses at TKO, it still hasn’t happened yet.
The Boxing Reform Act was effectively drafted and designed by TKO in order to recreate the conditions under which UFC managed to monopolize the sport of MMA. Promotions that qualify are allowed to forego the sanctioning organizations at the heart of the original Ali act and use their own belts. History tells us this leads to all sorts of coercive situations where fighters are exploited and the best don’t fight the best, but who’s paying attention to the past these days? Or the present, where top UFC fighters make 1/10th the amount that top boxers do?
Dana White’s entrance into boxing will undoubtedly be interesting, and we’ll see if he can live up to his own hype in 2026. We’ll also see how Zuffa Boxing skirts the rules of the current Muhammad Ali Act, and how things change if and when the Ali Reform act goes through.
