Hearn questioned what viewers were supposed to take from the night beyond the results themselves. According to him, the card feels closer to a standard fight night than the opening stage of a league with defined stakes or progression.
“When I promote, it’s about storytelling,” Hearn said. “When you just say, ‘It’s a night of fighting,’ the next question is always the same. What for?”
Hearn argued that without a clear answer, the presentation becomes harder to sustain. Fighters win, interviews follow, and commentary fills time, but there is no clear explanation of where those victories lead. He suggested that even basic post-fight booking relies on having a visible next step, something he hasn’t seen built into Zuffa Boxing’s launch yet.
He contrasted that approach with how Matchroom Boxing usually presents its shows. Hearn pointed to fighters like Andy Cruz, whose early pro fights were positioned as part of a rapid ascent rather than isolated appearances. The emphasis, he said, is on sequence and movement rather than activity alone.
The sharpest part of Hearn’s criticism focused on Zuffa’s use of the word “league”. Dana White has publicly stated that Zuffa Boxing will not recognize traditional championship belts and intends to operate outside of the sanctioning system. Hearn questioned how that position lined up with some of the fighters closely associated with the project.
“What is the league?” Hearn asked. He pointed to Jai Opetaia, who signed with Zuffa as he moved on to a unified world title fight elsewhere. To hear, it creates immediate confusion. A promotion that distances itself from belts is in line with a fighter whose immediate path centers on unification.
Hearn said that inconsistency makes it harder to understand whether Zuffa Boxing is building a closed system or simply staging events while a larger plan is still being formed. He questioned whether the league had even officially started, or whether the opening performances functioned as placeholders while decisions were made behind the scenes.
He also suggested that the speed of the rollout could explain the lack of definition. Zuffa Boxing announced a January launch, secured a broadcast platform and put together a card in a short window.
“I think it went down very quickly,” Hearn said. “‘We start in January. So let’s just have a fight and go from there.’
Hearn didn’t dismiss the project entirely. He framed his comments as uncertainty rather than opposition, pointing out that new promotions often seem undefined in their earliest stages.
For Hearn, the test may come less from the results than from how the program presents itself. If the broadcast language relies on league identity or a Zuffa-specific endpoint, the concept can begin to separate itself from a standard fight night. If the post-fight commentary and discussion mirrors conventional boxing coverage, his concerns about the placeholder event will be harder to avoid.
The fighters are legal and the matches competitive. What remains unclear is whether this opening night points to something distinct, or whether it simply looks like boxing, as it already exists under a different banner.
