The Fight Game on Two Fronts: Dana White Under Oath and the Battle for Boxing's Soul

There are weeks in this sport when the noise from inside the arenas almost drowns out the noise from inside the courtrooms. This wasn't one of those weeks. This was a week when the courtrooms were loud enough to shake the rafters, and when the arenas delivered a moment so frightening it put everything else into perspective.

Start with Shadasia Green. On April 17, at the Infosys Theater inside Madison Square Garden, Green walked out to defend her IBF and WBO super middleweight titles against a challenger nobody was talking about as a major threat. She left on a stretcher. Three days later, she posted from the ICU that she had blood on her brain. No surgery needed, she said, but the words "blood on my brain" hit this sport like they always do, like a reminder that nothing else we argue about on any given week really matters in the same way.

Green is recovering. That's the most important sentence in this issue.

And then, the following Saturday in Las Vegas, a UFC Fight Night that tied an all-time record for decisions on a single card reminded everyone how unfinished the conversation about fighter compensation really is. Eleven decisions. One card. In that same week, on Capitol Hill, senators grilled boxing's biggest figures about the Muhammad Ali Boxing Revival Act, the legislation that has been making its way through Congress for years and now feels more real than ever. Oscar De La Hoya left the hearing frustrated. Nico Ali Walsh left conflicted. The fight game is genuinely at an inflection point, and this week made it impossible to look away.

We've got two monster fight weekends coming, Dana White's missing phones at the center of a federal courthouse in Nevada, and more. Let's get into it.

Dana White took a seat in federal court in Las Vegas on February 4 and 5, and what emerged from that spoliation hearing in Johnson v. Zuffa was one of the most remarkable scenes in the history of combat sports litigation. I'm told by sources following the case closely that the two-day evidentiary hearing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada produced testimony that should concern anyone paying attention to how the UFC does business.

Here's what happened. Plaintiffs in the case, fighters who competed from July 1, 2017 forward, alleged that TKO Operating Co., Endeavor Group Holdings, and Zuffa LLC destroyed years of critical evidence and covered up what they did. Their lawyers moved for severe sanctions, including default judgment. The hearing Judge Richard F. Boulware II presided over was supposed to determine whether that happened.

White took the stand and, under oath, admitted to missing years of text messages across various phones. He said he wasn't "tech-savvy." He acknowledged losing a phone within the last year. He testified that he no longer handles fighter negotiations, that he handed that role to Hunter Campbell around 2016. And in one exchange that lawyers for the plaintiffs will likely lean on heavily, White acknowledged saying to Campbell: "Congrats, you get to do this."

Tracy Long, UFC's Vice President of Athlete Compliance and Regulatory, didn't help the organization's case either. Long testified that she prepares contracts based on instructions from matchmakers Hunter Campbell and Sean Shelby. She gave frequent "I don't know" and "I don't recall" responses. She acknowledged using screenshots of text messages to document deals. There were also flagged missing communications involving the Ilia Topuria contract hold-up before his fight with Charles Oliveira at UFC 317 last June.

Judge Boulware was not subtle. He noted that missing phones and records represented "sanctionable offenses" and ordered the UFC to make a full accounting of the missing devices, with a resolution target of end of April 2026. That deadline, if you are reading this on Monday morning, is this week.

The backdrop matters. This is the follow-on case to Le v. Zuffa, which settled for $375 million in February 2025, covering more than 1,100 fighters from December 2010 through June 2017. Judge Boulware himself found that Zuffa had acted anticompetitively and wrote of fighters being "trapped by Zuffa's exclusionary contracts," with the UFC holding "monopsony power" over fighter services. The American Antitrust Institute named Le v. Zuffa its 2025 Antitrust Enforcement Award winner.

Now there are two additional cases in the District of Nevada: Cirkunovs v. Zuffa (Case No. 2:25-cv-00914), filed May 2025, challenging arbitration and class action waivers added after the Le settlement, and Davis v. Zuffa (Case No. 2:25-cv-00946), also filed May 2025, arguing that fighters who competed for other promotions were harmed by the UFC's monopolistic practices. The end-of-April accounting deadline Judge Boulware set is a pivot point in this litigation. Watch it closely.

The super middleweight division has been one of boxing's most loaded weight classes for the better part of five years, and this Saturday night it gets a clarity fight. David Benavidez, the undefeated American Monster from Phoenix, steps in against Gilberto "Zurdo" Ramirez in a de facto number one contender fight at 168 pounds with the undisputed crown in clear view.

Benavidez is 29-0, a volume puncher who walks through adversity and throws leather until something lands clean. Ramirez has good size and a hard left hand, but I've seen him hesitate when a big puncher starts tying up his work late. Benavidez does not hesitate. I like Benavidez by TKO in the second half. The division is waiting.

Same night, different world. The best pound-for-pound fighter alive defends his undisputed super bantamweight titles at the most iconic boxing venue in Japan. Nakatani is genuinely skilled, a former flyweight champion with real power. But Inoue is Inoue. He is operating at a level most fighters at any weight in this era cannot touch. Set your alarm.

British heavyweight supremacy is on the table. Fabio Wardley and Daniel Dubois both arrive at the point where the winner has a legitimate claim to be England's top heavyweight. Dubois had a breakthrough run against Usyk that nobody expected. Wardley hits as hard as anyone at 200-plus pounds in Britain. This ends dramatically in either direction.

The biggest business story in boxing right now is not a deal that has been signed. It's a deal that is almost signed. Eddie Hearn confirmed this week that Tyson Fury versus Anthony Joshua is in the final stages of negotiation. "We will have a contract," Hearn said, "and we haven't signed a contract yet, but we are negotiating the final points in an agreement to come back to the ring." If this gets signed, and I'm told both sides want it done before summer, it would be the biggest British boxing event in a generation.

Most Valuable Promotions held its first U.S. card on April 17 at the Infosys Theater inside Madison Square Garden with a new ESPN broadcast deal attached. Lani Daniels, a New Zealand women's super middleweight almost entirely unknown to American audiences, won the IBF and WBO titles in a performance that nobody expected. The ESPN deal gives MVP distribution that matters.

Richardson Hitchins vacated the IBF super lightweight title this week and is moving to welterweight, where he has his eyes on Ryan Garcia and Devin Haney. Arthur Biyarslanov, a 21-0 Russian-born Canadian who last fought April 9 in Montreal, is now in position for the vacant IBF 140-pound title.

The Lawrence Okolie versus Tony Yoka fight scheduled for Britain was canceled this week after a drug test failure. Details on which fighter failed are still emerging.

Three active federal cases in the District of Nevada name TKO and Zuffa as defendants, and this week underscored how consequential they are.

In Johnson v. Zuffa LLC (Case No. 2:21-cv-01189), the spoliation hearing from February 4-5 produced Dana White's sworn testimony about missing phones and lost text messages. Judge Richard Boulware set an end-of-April 2026 deadline for the UFC to account for all missing devices. That deadline falls this week. Plaintiffs moved for default judgment as a sanction. Separately, plaintiff's counsel sought a contempt ruling against Dominance MMA, the management company run by Ali Abdelaziz, for discovery violations in the same case.

Cirkunovs v. Zuffa (Case No. 2:25-cv-00914) challenges the arbitration and class action waivers the UFC added to fighter contracts after Le v. Zuffa. Davis v. Zuffa (Case No. 2:25-cv-00946) argues that fighters who competed for other promotions were harmed by UFC's monopolistic practices.

On Capitol Hill, the Muhammad Ali Boxing Revival Act cleared the House and went to a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on April 22. Oscar De La Hoya said it "felt like an uphill battle." Nico Ali Walsh said "the cons outweigh the pros." Eddie Hearn: "The decision's already made." The bill's path through the Senate is not guaranteed.

Aljamain Sterling is not going away quietly at featherweight. Sterling beat Youssef Zalal on Saturday by unanimous decision, 49-45 on all three cards, and immediately called out Movsar Evloev along with champion Alexander Volkanovski. He is 18-5 in the UFC, 26-5 overall. The decision-heavy card around him did him no favors for highlights, but his numbers are accumulating. He is coming with "no pause."

Lani Daniels is a name you need to know. The 37-year-old from Pipiwai, New Zealand came to New York on April 17 as the underdog challenger and left with two world title belts. Daniels entered 12-4-2, had won titles at light heavyweight and heavyweight in New Zealand, and now holds the IBF and WBO belts at super middleweight in her biggest fight and first on American soil. She stopped a 16-2 former unified champion in round nine, inside Madison Square Garden, on the first American card of the promotion backing her. She is 37. Most fighters at that age are winding down. Daniels is just getting to the main stage.

Jarrell Miller is the WBA heavyweight mandatory challenger. "Big Baby" won a unanimous decision over Lenier Pero at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas on Saturday, 117-111 twice and 115-113 once. Miller is 28-1-2, 37 years old, and his path back from years of failed drug tests has been one of boxing's more improbable second acts. He called out Deontay Wilder after Saturday. The mandatory position makes him impossible to ignore.

Here's the thing about the Ali Act Senate hearing: the people who testified in favor of it were not particularly convincing, and the people who are supposed to benefit from it are deeply divided, and none of that actually means the legislation is wrong.

De La Hoya feeling like he was fighting uphill at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing is not a surprise. He walked in as a former promoter with mixed baggage, and senators were never going to treat him like a reformer. Nico Ali Walsh saying "the cons outweigh the pros" was more revealing, because it surfaced something that has always been complicated about the Ali Act push: the fighters and former fighters who understand the sport best are not uniformly behind it.

But here's what I keep coming back to. The core argument for reform in boxing, that fighters deserve better financial transparency, contract protections, and a structure that doesn't allow a single promoter to effectively own a champion for life, is correct. It has always been correct. The sport has been exploiting fighters in the open for decades, and the fact that boxing's own stakeholders can't agree on how to fix it does not make the exploitation less real. It just makes the fix harder.

The UFC's antitrust cases running through Nevada are the MMA version of the same argument. Judge Boulware already found monopsony. The fighters were trapped. The settlement cost $375 million and counting.

Both sports are having the same underlying argument right now, about who the sport belongs to. Not the promoters, not the networks, not the governing bodies. The fighters. That argument is not going away. The hearing was messy. The path forward is unclear. But the bill is moving, and the moment in American boxing law is real.

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