Ajagba’s right hand did the trick in the ring. White held his own outside of it and ended the evening challenging the belt system in boxing.
Eddie Hearn called out Zuffa’s decision to stage the Jai Opetaia vs. Brandon Glanton’s Zuffa cruiserweight title fight as “pathetic,” wondering why anyone would dare step outside the comforting arms of the Alphabet Committees and their sanctioning fees. White, unsurprisingly, did not reach for a softer tone.
“I saw Eddie Hearn saying the belt was tacky and all that,” White said. “I don’t think anyone would look at Eddie Hearn and say, ‘oh, this guy is a visionary’… This guy has been in boxing forever.
“I look at him like most politicians do; you’ve done nothing in this sport except stay in your lane, follow all the rules and drive straight… You became part of the problem, that’s what happened.”
“I don’t want to sit here and bash Eddie Hearn or anything, but Eddie Hearn works for his dad. I don’t think he came in and ever had any vision, whereas we do. We’re going to change the whole sport.”
“This sport has been around for over 100 years and there are a lot of guys doing it. There is a lot of money in this sport. Eddie Hearn and his dad have a lot of money. It’s not that they can’t compete. They can’t compete because they don’t know how to compete. There’s no vision there.”
It was a warm-up.
White expanded it to include Oscar De La Hoya and the sanctioning crowd.
“They don’t stop talking, WBC, Eddie Hearn and all that Oscar De La Hoya shit,” White said. “We all know [De La Hoya is] fg mentally ill. The guy talks such nonsense and his company is in danger of being taken over. He sues his player to try to stay with him. Has he done Clapback Thursday lately? I would love to see this Thursday’s episode of Clapback Thursday directed by Oscar De La Hoya. Everyone feels it. It’s already happening. It’s going to be a fun year.”
The WBC also caught one.
“I said what I was going to do. I never said anything bad about the WBC, the IBF or any of them. I just said I wouldn’t do business with them. I’ll do my thing.”
He then set his sights on Mauricio Sulaiman.
“We’re three fights in and people are asking all these questions, and this Sulaimán is amazing,” White said. “He’s amazing. He’s the best PR guy in the history of how fucked up boxing is. He’s amazing.”
“At the end of the day, you should be the experts on what’s going on,” White said. “Like I said, I’m going to lay out the scope of work this year and then you can judge me based on how it goes. Everyone knows this thing has been broken for a long time.
Get rid of the insults, it’s about who holds the pen. Alphabet services run rankings, issue fines and stamp seat belts after inspections. Promoters operate within this system, lining up their fighters, protecting positions, and paying for the privilege of moving one place at a time.
White is not interested in waiting for a call from the commission. He wants to have a board in his office, rankings on paper and a strip with a logo instead of three letters.
In boxing, a belt has value when a fighter has to earn it the challenging way, through eliminators, against other top heavyweights who can hit back. Delete this path and you will have a nice photo and a recent graphics pack.
White made it clear that he preferred to write his own rankings and appoint his own principals. Next year will show whether his heavyweights are making their way through real elimination fights against major boxers or just trading leather in a closed shop with a different logo on their belt.
Tomek Galm is a boxing journalist covering the global fight landscape since 2014, specializing in heavyweight analysis, industry trends and fighter psychology.