Zuffa Boxing opens in a small-scale space

Big debut, small venue.

The January 23 launch of Zuffa Boxing’s new promotional lineup of fighters starting a union with Paramount+ will occur at the UFC Apex, a Nevada fight official confirmed to BoxingScene Tuesday.

The Apex is an intimate venue inside UFC’s Las Vegas headquarters. It regularly hosted COVID-era UFC fights and has since become the home for many UFC Fight Night events and pre-fight weigh-ins. It’s yet to be seen what kind of crowd will be permitted to attend the event.

Rival promoters Eddie Hearn and Oscar De La Hoya have ridiculed Zuffa leadership over taking a minimalistic effort to the first card with fighters that have yet to be formally announced.

Candidates include ranked 154lbs fighter Callum Walsh, former 140lbs champion Jose “Rayo” Valenzuela and rising prospect Justin Viloria.

Zuffa, headed by UFC CEO/President Dana White and TKO executive Nick Khan, have launched a lobbying push seeking for Congress to alter existing federal regulations aimed to curb promoter manipulation of fighters, including disclosures revealing what given events generate financially.

Zuffa also seeks to rank its own fighters and award its own title belts in at least eight weight classes, with White saying he does not intend to work with the four sanctioning bodies – WBC, WBO, WBA, IBF – or rival promoters.

The Zuffa card falls on a Friday as part of a weekend that features the January 24 IBF lightweight title defense by current titleholder Raymond Muratalla on DAZN versus the Hearn-promoted challenger Andy Cruz, a 2021 Olympic gold medalist from Cuba. 

Hearn and De La Hoya have vigorously defended boxing’s free-market system and the value of fighters pursuing world-title belts.

Hearn recently told Ariel Helwani that Zuffa was missing an opportunity by debuting with such a watered-down opening event.

“You’ve got to come out of the blocks with a bang. You can’t come out with something lame” Hearn said. “What are you going to do, do a show in the APEX to launch TKO Boxing? It’s got to be a monster and with [three] weeks to go, how much of a monster can it be? I want to be up against them. Whether we are product wise, we’ll see very soon. But they’re very good, they’re very smart, they’re very connected. But if they come out weak on January 23rd, they are going to get [criticized] because everybody’s waiting to give them an absolute shellacking.”

Lance Pugmire is BoxingScene’s senior U.S. writer and an assistant producer for ProBox TV. Pugmire has covered boxing since the early 2000s, first at the Los Angeles Times and then at The Athletic and USA Today. He won the Boxin