If a Zuffa Boxing takes place at the Meta Apex and no one is around to hear it — does it make a sound?
LAS VEGAS — To be fair, it was the first one. In fact, at the newly installed concessions at the newly named Meta Apex, you could buy a t-shirt that proudly stated, “I WAS THERE” for Z01, which is the shorthand for Zuffa Boxing 1. The first time Dana White mentioned Zuffa Boxing was all the way back in 2017, while the UFC CEO was still intoxicated by the fumes of Conor McGregor’s boxing foray against Floyd Mayweather. Some eight years and change later, the thing finally came together on Friday night, before a live studio audience of several hundred.
The guy next to me said he’d heard the capacity was 700, going so far as to try to count the seats in a section as if to fact-check his source. White himself said 300 in the post-fight press conference, which is probably a low estimate yet perhaps strategic. Because however many people had gathered at the UFC’s Vegas lair on El Camino, they were lost in a collective daydream by the time the main event between Callum Walsh and Carlos Ocampo took place.
Maybe it was because of all the options in Vegas, Walsh felt like but a mild attraction, but energy levels were dangerously low. It was dead quiet through any critical action within the headliner, and it wasn’t a sign of respect, as such silences might be in Japan. It was more a drifting preoccupation. One media personality said if a protestor had yelled out, “Don’t pass the Ali Revival Act!” at any point between the rounds of two and eight, the world would’ve heard it loud and clear. In those same middle rounds, when the referee was giving the Irishman Walsh a standing eight-count, Dana White, Hunter Campbell and Ari Emanuel were all chewing gum nervously from ringside because, man, that’s all they needed…
For Zuffa’s favorite boxer to lose in a spot meant for him to shine.
To be fair, it was the first one. It was a spartan affair, yes. Aside from Paramount+ and Riyadh Season, there weren’t any sponsors in the ring. The boxer’s trunks were blank slates, except for the flags of their countries. The gloves were mostly black, though one prelimist went with pink. It was a rather severe aesthetic all told, but one that Zuffa is rolling out to cotton closer to the UFC’s model.
Uniformity is part of it. And uniformity isn’t exactly soulful. Nothing was, except maybe the opening video montage that paid tribute to boxing’s best over the generations to Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” — there was Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, Chris Eubank, George Foreman, Marvin Hagler, Thomas Hearns, Muhammad Ali in both color and black & white.
Homage to all that stood before, homage to where Zuffa was daring to go.
Yet none of those fighters were competing in a warehouse. They were at large among the people. At electric venues. In places where thousands of people could galvanize them with energy and enthusiasm and curse them with actual fits of human passion. Wearing trunks that became iconic heirlooms to collectors, and robes to match, flash bulbs, entourages. Frank Sinatra acted as a photographer to attend the Fight of the Century in 1971, doing whatever it took to be there. Atmosphere has always played a part in boxing’s lore. It’s better to cut tension with a knife than to karate chop indifference with your hand.
At the Meta Apex, which could easily be called Omega 9, we were watching boxing the way audiences watched “2001: A Space Odyssey.” That is, with a sense of forlorn awe, which tended more existential than exhilarating.
What is this? How did we get here? How do I pass eternity? It’s never a good sign when a 10-round fight feels a little like a sentence. And it’s never good when the principals are made to feel like they’re taking part in an off-Broadway production.
To be fair, White made it clear that this was the first one. We can’t judge things off the first one. By the end of 2026, he says, they will have worked out the kinks. From a production standpoint, certainly. Maybe the pacing could be better. Maybe Max Kellerman can tone it down just a little, as Zuffa Boxing, as far as we know, isn’t a gift specifically to him that he unwrapped on Christmas morning. White was on the blue phone throughout the main card, addressing the issues. He said there were many, but didn’t feel like sharing what they were.
Well, one of the issues is that you simply can’t keep insisting that the Apex isn’t synonymous with ennui. Leave the soulless venues to Saudi Arabia, the awkward silences to those who can no longer feel. The Apex was a savior for the UFC during the pandemic; now it’s a reminder of the impersonal effects of the pandemic. The jarring lack of need of such a venue. If they make Jai Opetaia — the high-profile Australian signee who happens to be the best cruiserweight in the world — fight at the Meta Apex come March, it would truly be a travesty. You can’t pluck an exotic animal out of the wild and confine him to a corporate ballroom.
Or can they? Opetaia said in the post-fight, “I’m making my Zuffa debut on March 8 here in the Apex,” which seems fairly definitive.
And so this was Zuffa’s entrance into the world of boxing. Nearly all the matches, including the main event, went to decisions, which isn’t that unusual for a boxing card. Among the symptoms that MMA fans may encounter when trying to focus on the boxing ring will be drowsiness, as the subtleties of the sweet science are sometimes the entire story. Yet it’s hard to blame Walsh for not putting away Ocampo, a seasoned veteran who has stood in there against Errol Spence Jr. and Tim Tszyu (both of whom did put him away). At 24 years old, he was carrying tremendous pressure to deliver in the biggest fight of his career.
When asked if he was channeling Roy Jones Jr. in his approach, leading with hooks the way he was, Walsh said he was more in the vein of Joe Calzaghe — the undefeated Welsh fighter who capped his career by beating Jones at Madison Square Garden in 2008. Kellerman of course showed his ring erudition by commenting on the differences between Calzaghe and what he saw in Walsh, but by this time half of the hundreds had already bolted the scene. There was a reception for VIPs which had an open bar and some very nice hors d’oeuvres.
To be fair, by the end of 2026 this will all be a distant memory. We will know better how Zuffa Boxing will stack up against the other sanctioning bodies. White said that by May they will expand the seating capacity at the Meta Apex to 1,100, meaning they are intent on hosting events there throughout the year. One way to change the boxing world is to regrow it in a lab. Maybe that, too, will improve. Maybe 1,100 people can feel big in ways that boxing’s best has always felt big.
Perhaps the best fight on the card was the one between New Jersey’s Julian “Hammer Hands” Rodriguez and Cain Sandoval. Under the new bonus structure, it was given Fight of the Night honors. Sandoval was relentless in bringing the pressure, and Rodriguez, fighting from a pug’s bread-and-butter position of the crouch, was landing big counter shots that never taught his counterpart a lesson. He brutalized Sandoval’s body and slammed shots into his temple. You could hear everything for that one. You could hear corner instructions. The compression of the gloves. The wheeze of the blows as they landed.
What we couldn’t hear was an accompanying ovation. What you got was a smattering. I know because, as the t-shirts said, I was there for Z01. And that was the highlight of the night.
