A confusing situation between Dana White’s Zuffa Boxing and the IBF has taken various turns in and around Jai Opetaia’s Zuffa debut this past week.
Opetaia (30-0, 23 KOs) secured a wide unanimous-decision victory against Brandon Glanton in the early hours this morning, while not defending the IBF cruiserweight title. Opetaia came out ahead of the fight to say that “We are fighting for the IBF” in an interview with Sporting News Australia. The IBF reversed that decision a day before the fight with a message that Opetaia would be stripped of his IBF belt if he would fight Glanton for the Zuffa title. “I got told five minutes ago, as of now I’m actually not stripped,” Opetaia said at the post-fight press conference.
The Australian southpaw would claim the inaugural Zuffa world title and defend his Ring Magazine belt with the IBF not playing a role.
White made his stance and vision pretty clear regarding the recognized four sanctioning bodies when he spoke to reporters following the show.
“What we are doing is that all the guys who fight for us, that [Zuffa world title] will be the belt. There won’t be any other belts. We will have some situations where Jai wanted to fight for the IBF, but this is all just getting started. We are four fights in. In two or three years we will see where we stand. The writing is on the f***ing wall! Everybody can read it clearly now.”
When asked if the IBF would refund the sanctioning fees that Opetaia’s team paid to defend their title, the Zuffa president didn’t hold back on his opinion.
“You thought that would be the first thing that they would do,” White explained. “Our belt was disrespected, here is your money back.”
White also added: “They planned to do that. 110 percent they planned to do that. First of all the [IBF] belt was sat in front of him the entire press conference. The belt could not have been more prominent and it was in front of him because it is his belt…We did everything the right way and the way it was supposed to be done. How could we have done anything differently? I’ve never disrespected them, I’ve never said anything about them. When the WBC, he [Mauricio Sulaiman] went out on that big tour doing all the media, I’d never said anything about the WBC other than I wasn’t interested in working with the sanctioning bodies.”
White would then ramp up his distaste for the sanctioning bodies.
“They are all rinky-dink,” White added. “Every one of these people are the most rinky-dink, bottom-feeder, drone-level people that I have ever… I don’t know, what do you want to call it? Beating up babies! F***ing nothing, no resistance. You know, bottom-feeder bulls***.”
