Roy Jones Jr. Rips Into Zuffa Boxing: “We’re Going to Kill the History of Boxing”
Roy Jones Jr. didn’t hold back during a recent interview when asked about Dana White’s Zuffa Boxing, he went off so hard he stormed out. The boxing legend raised his voice about how fighters would eventually need to comply with whatever the organization demands just to get opportunities, and his frustration boiled over before he left.
Jones Jr.’s core complaint centers on what he sees as a dangerous shift in boxing’s power structure. He pointed directly at proposed changes to the Muhammad Ali Act, which was designed to protect fighter rights and prevent monopolistic control.
Roy Jones Jr. Blasts Zuffa Boxing: “You Gotta Kiss Their Ass If You Want to Fight”
According to Jones, opening that door for Zuffa amounts to handing the keys to someone who’s shown they know how to lock fighters in place. His analogy was pointed: boxing put security bars on the building to keep people out, but now that someone known for breaking into stores moved to the neighborhood, officials are giving him the key. Speaking to Fight Hub TV, he said:
“You gotta kiss their ass if you want to fight. Most of the people around too idiotic to understand what is really happening. They don’t understand. By the time they get it, it’s already too late… We’re going to kill the history of boxing to make it look like the UFC?”
The real tension stems from fighter pay dynamics. When UFC fighters discover they can earn more in a single boxing night than they made across their entire MMA careers, Jones Jr. argues that creates chaos. Boxers have historically commanded higher purses than their MMA counterparts, and importing UFC’s pay model into boxing would compress those earnings significantly. Jones made his position clear: he wouldn’t willingly adopt a system that’s hurt fighters he cares about in another sport.
Jones Jr. went further, painting a dystopian picture of what happens when one organization controls everything. Fighters would lose negotiating power. They’d have no identity outside what the promotion allows. If they cross the wrong people, title shots disappear. He predicted that if sanctioning bodies lose authority, the WBC, WBA, IBF, and WBO titles cease to mean anything, and decades of boxing history get erased. Boxing’s competitive structure, which developed over generations, would transform into something unrecognizable.
The Zuffa boxing division is still in its infancy, having launched with major fights like Canelo Alvarez versus Terence Crawford and now building toward events featuring fighters like Jai Opetaia. Despite White’s influence in MMA, boxing operates under different rules with entrenched sanctioning bodies. Whether Zuffa can reshape that landscape remains an open question, but Jones Jr. clearly believes the fight to preserve boxing’s independence has already begun.
