Teofimo Lopez Explains Why He Wants No Part of Zuffa Boxing
Teofimo Lopez is drawing a hard line with Zuffa Boxing during fight week, and he is tying that stance to the kind of champion he still wants to become. The former two-division titleholder said he has no interest in aligning with Dana White’s promotion because he believes its model would wipe out the sanctioning-body belts he has spent his career chasing.
Lopez made the comments as he prepares to challenge Rolly Romero for the WBA welterweight title on Saturday at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The timing matters, because the man who last beat him, Shakur Stevenson, signed a multi-fight deal with Zuffa in July.
“I don’t really like associating and talking about Zuffa fighters,” Lopez said.
That is more than a promotional slight. Stevenson remains the WBO and Ring junior welterweight champion after outboxing Lopez by unanimous decision on Jan. 31 at Madison Square Garden, winning 119-109 on all three cards and becoming a four-division champion.
Lopez, 22-2 with 13 knockouts, did not follow that path. He moved up to 147 pounds, launched Takeover Promotions LLC to run his own career, and signed an exclusive multi-fight deal directly with DAZN instead of joining White’s roster.
He said the issue is bigger than one opponent. In Lopez’s view, Zuffa’s long-term plan collides with the traditional title picture that still defines boxing’s biggest achievements.
“Zuffa wants to get rid of all the sanctioning body belts within a grasp of 10 years, and I think that defeats the purpose of what I’ve always aimed for, which was undisputed,” Lopez said.
White has been open about wanting Zuffa to operate on its own terms. He has said the company will issue its own championship belts and will not recognize the WBC, WBA, IBF, and WBO, the four major bodies that currently control rankings and world titles.
Lopez is treating that approach as a threat to the undisputed path, not a modernization of it. He unified the lightweight division in 2020 by beating Vasiliy Lomachenko, later won the WBO and Ring titles at 140 against Josh Taylor, and has repeatedly framed his career around collecting the belts that still sit at the center of the sport.
That is why his next comment is the one with real business weight. Lopez said he chose DAZN because he does not want his career trapped if Congress changes the rules that currently keep promoters from acting like sanctioning bodies.
“I think that it’s a disservice, and that’s why I trusted my gut and went directly with DAZN… it protects me in case they pass this bill soon for the revival act,” Lopez said.
The bill he is referring to is the Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revival Act. The House passed it by voice vote on March 24, and a Senate version was introduced on July 30 by Sens. Ted Cruz and Jacky Rosen.
The legislation would allow unified boxing organizations, or UBOs, to handle promotion, rankings, and titles under one roof, similar to the way the UFC operates in MMA. Critics, including Oscar De La Hoya and Muhammad Ali’s grandson Nico Ali Walsh, have argued that structure would concentrate power in the hands of the largest promoters.
The current Ali Act, in place since 2000, was written to keep promoters from also functioning as sanctioning bodies. Dan Rafael and other industry reporters have noted that, under existing federal law, a promoter-issued belt is a trophy rather than a fully recognized world title.
That distinction is exactly what Lopez is trying to stay on the right side of. A DAZN deal, structured through his own company rather than through Zuffa, keeps him in the traditional championship system while the Revival Act is still moving through the Senate.
The next legislative step is committee markup after the Senate’s August recess. If the bill does not pass both chambers and reach President Donald Trump’s desk before the next session begins in January, the process would have to start over.
Lopez’s immediate future is not in Washington. It is in Las Vegas on Saturday, when Romero, 17-2 with 13 knockouts, makes the first defense of the WBA welterweight title he won against Ryan Garcia in May 2025.
The fight headlines a Premier Boxing Champions pay-per-view on DAZN and Prime Video. A win would make Lopez a three-division champion and put a major sanctioning-body belt back around his waist less than seven months after Stevenson took the last one.
That is the career Lopez is choosing to protect. He is not arguing that Zuffa cannot make big fights. He is saying he does not want to live in a version of boxing where those fights no longer lead to undisputed.
Saturday will not settle the political fight over the Revival Act. It will show whether Lopez can start building the kind of title run he still believes is worth more than a company belt.