(BoxingScene)
Though a long-time admirer of boxing’s raw appeal, Dana White regularly criticised the makeup of the sport for several years before he entered the marketplace with promises to reinvigorate a tired championship system.
“I’ve been talking smack about boxing for a long time, and now it’s time to put my money where my mouth is,” he confirmed in January. “I’m gonna get rid of the sanctioning organizations. The best will fight the best. We’re going to sign all the young, up-and-coming guys.”
The only problem with promises like that is when they’re followed by last week’s “BIG ANNOUNCEMENT” that Zuffa Boxing’s first champion will be crowned at cruiserweight when division leader Jai Opetaia takes on fringe contender Branton Glanton. Opetaia is priced at an unbackable 1/18 to win. Not exactly a new dawn, then. Merely an all-too familiar one.
Opetaia-Glanton is no better than the myriad ‘world title’ fights we’ve seen that match a top-class fighter with someone nobody of sane mind would pick to win. The type that White, while championing the merits of his UFC brand in the not-so-distant past, would surely have ridiculed. Even Max Kellerman can’t claim to have been dreaming his whole life about this one.
“What’s really interesting about this fight, [Glanton] has never been stopped,” White said. This is true, if not necessarily interesting. Glanton’s three defeats to David Light, Soslan Asbarov, and Chris Billam-Smith all came on points. What’s also true is that Glanton, irrespective of any iron cladding his chin might possess, has never beaten an opponent anywhere near Opetaia’s level. Whichever way you spin it, this is an underwhelming fight. Had the WBC mandated it, for example, the outcry would have been deafening.
The situation that White finds himself in has been a long time in the making, however.
In 1983, with the WBC and WBA already firmly entrenched in the system, the IBF staged their first title fight when Marvin Camel, a former cruiserweight WBC champion, was paired with Roddy MacDonald, a foe even more undeserving than Glanton. Before long the IBF were throwing belts at more established stars like Larry Holmes, Donald Curry, and Marvin Hagler to validate their presence. Five years later, perhaps spurred by how easy the IBF’s entry was, the WBO came along.
And so began the ‘four-belt era’ that today is misinterpreted by certain marketers as some kind of golden era…
2026-02-18 14:00:00
