We are just two days from Zuffa Boxing's anticipated debut on Paramount+, and still very little is confirmed about its plans in the sport. 

When Dana White announced TKO's entry into boxing this past March, he made it known they would be making some major changes to how the sport is currently run and employing a UFC-like league model. But almost a year later, very few details have been announced about what that actually looks like. 

And Zuffa's signing of IBF cruiserweight champion Jai Opetaia, while a tremendous addition, further complicates matters.

So let's run through four key questions about Zuffa Boxing ahead of its launch.

1. Is Zuffa Boxing recognizing the sanctioning bodies?

If you had asked me to name one fighter whose focus was on winning the belts and becoming undisputed champion over everything else, I would've said Opetaia.

Opetaia has become a fan favorite within the boxing fraternity because of his old-school fighter mentality and stoic personality. The Australian, who overcame a broken jaw to win his maiden world title against Mairis Briedis, is a fearless fighter. Opetaia is not interested in being a star, really. He just wants to win all the belts at cruiserweight and prove he's the best in the division. 

But his goals have been delayed by the other champions' reluctance to face him. Opetaia even offered to give money out of his own purse in an attempt to entice then-WBO cruiserweight champion Chris Billam-Smith to share the ring with him, but Billam-Smith refused to do so. Opetaia has been unsuccessfully chasing unifications for more than two years.

So when the Aussie announced he was signing with Dana White's Zuffa, it made little sense. White has already gone on record to declare that he won't be recognizing any of the sanctioning bodies in his boxing league and will have just one world title — the Zuffa belt — although that hasn't come into play yet because TKO, the parent company of the UFC, WWE and Zuffa Boxing, still needs the Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revival Act to enter into law before that can happen.

White's plans in boxing should theoretically rule out Opetaia's lifelong dream. However, when Opetaia announced his signing to Zuffa, he did so by saying: "Let's get these big fights over the line — unifications, undisputed soon." Opetaia's manager, Mick Francis, has also claimed Opetaia will be allowed to defend his belt and chase unifications while under the Zuffa banner.

So, who am I to believe? If Opetaia and Francis are correct, then White has abandoned his Zuffa Belt strategy before he's staged a single show? On Friday, White also released a promo that featured a snippet of the Zuffa Boxing belt, so no, that's not it. Has Opetaia been misled as to how his arrangement with Zuffa would work? It's all very confusing.

2. What weight classes will Zuffa Boxing be using?

"We're going to have the basic weight classes that started everything," White declared when news of Zuffa's entry into boxing broke in March.

White has previously voiced his belief there are too many weight classes in boxing, and so it appears he will only be incorporating a small number of divisions into Zuffa Boxing shows. 

Now, we haven't heard anything about White's plans regarding the weight divisions since he said that, but the astute observers among us will notice that only five categories — bantamweight, featherweight, lightweight, welterweight, middleweight — are being utilized for his debut show on Friday in Las Vegas. None of the super or junior divisions is featured on that card, only the traditional weight classes.

Harry How via Getty Images

Callum Walsh, a 154-pounder, headlines the card against Carlos Ocampo, another super welterweight, at the middleweight limit. Have Walsh and Ocampo been asked to move up in weight for Zuffa's league, and if that is the case, what happens to all the fighters who compete in a division that Zuffa doesn't recognize? Will they not be considered for Zuffa shows?

One of those fighters is Opetaia. Opetaia campaigns at cruiserweight, a division that has only existed for the last 35 years. Will his division not be recognized by Zuffa and will he have to move up to heavyweight, further complicating his goal of being undisputed cruiserweight champion? Or will cruiserweight be an exception to White's "basic weight classes" plan? 

For a company that claims it wants to simplify boxing, Zuffa has so far only added confusion.

3. Will boxing under Zuffa play second fiddle to the UFC?

"We either go Friday or Sunday with boxing and UFC is on Saturday," White said at Wednesday's press conference for Walsh vs. Ocampo.

Saturday has long been considered the premium day to host a boxing or UFC event, and now it appears that day will be reserved for White's UFC events, while boxing will precede or follow the shows rather than competing directly with UFC events.

It seems like boxing is playing second fiddle to UFC events at Paramount, despite the sport's history of producing the majority of the biggest nights in combat sports. In recent years we saw the overwhelming success of Saul "Canelo" Alvarez vs. Terence Crawford in September and the three blockbuster events in 2023 — Gervonta Davis vs. Ryan Garcia, Errol Spence Jr. vs. Terence Crawford, and Alvarez vs. Jermell Charlo — which all produced gate receipts of more than $ 20 million each, something the UFC has done only once in its history.

When the UFC inked a $ 7.7 billion media rights deal with Paramount, it was a big talking point in the global sports world. Several weeks later, White announced a long-term rights deal, also with Paramount, for Zuffa Boxing. Except this time, the details were far more sparse, with one key element not disclosed to the public — how much the deal was worth. And importantly, how much smaller does that work out compared to TKO's UFC deal with Paramount? 

So how important is boxing to TKO and Paramount? Will Zuffa's best fighters be an afterthought while the UFC takes center stage?

4. Can TKO sign boxing stars without breaking its own business model?

Athlete compensation in the UFC is significantly smaller than it is in other sports, such as the NFL and the NBA. UFC fighters reportedly earn around 16% of the total revenue, while sports stars in other leagues can command as much as 50%.

White has long described boxing as having a "broken business model," no doubt because the sport is known to offer as much as 80% of event revenue to the fighters for some events. White has coined boxing events as "going out of business sales" because they attempt to extract as much money as possible, maximizing fighter compensation but failing to build a sustainable, long-term business.

Now, White enters the boxing world and will have to compete in a marketplace where the talent is paid much more than he is used to paying in MMA. Luckily for White, he has the backing of Turki Alalshikh and Sela, but it will still be interesting to see if Zuffa does pay top dollar for boxing's biggest stars and how long it will be forced to pay such money due to the competitive nature of the market.

Richard Pelham via Getty Images

One signing Zuffa is reportedly interested in is unified heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk, who has made hundreds of millions fighting in Saudi Arabia against the likes of Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua. Should Zuffa sign Usyk, it would see some of the biggest purses a fighter has ever been paid under White's banner, which could be a slap in the face to UFC fighters who may be just as popular but have nowhere near the earning capacity.

On Wednesday, the U.S. House Education and Workforce Committee adopted several changes to the proposed Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revival Act, which TKO intends to operate under as a Unified Boxing Organization. One of those changes was a mandatory free-agency window for boxers, whereby fighters would be allowed to communicate with rival UBOs or promoters during the final 30 days of their contracts. The amendment also capped UBO contracts to a maximum of six years. 

Both of these amendments would guarantee an introduction to the free market for Zuffa boxers at some point in their careers. If the traditional promoters, such as Matchroom or Golden Boy, continue to exist, it would allow for boxers to be offered competitive purses as their profiles may be raised by Zuffa and Paramount. Zuffa could be forced to pay the market value to retain the stars it's built to keep them from opposing promoters, which could make it necessary for TKO to work under a very different fighter compensation model than it has in the UFC.

In trying to “fix” boxing’s economics, White may discover the very thing he hates — an open, competitive market — is precisely what makes boxing impossible to control.