{"id":426968,"date":"2026-01-23T00:37:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T00:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/426968\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T00:37:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T00:37:07","slug":"matchroom-ceo-frank-smith-reacts-to-jai-opetaia-choosing-to-sign-with-dana-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/426968\/","title":{"rendered":"Matchroom CEO Frank Smith reacts to Jai Opetaia choosing to sign with Dana White"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matchroom Boxing CEO Frank Smith insists he is not dwelling on the departure of Jai Opetaia to Zuffa Boxing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Opetaia announced last week that he and long-time co-promoter Tasman Fighters will now work with Dana White and Zuffa<\/a>, in a move that further underlines White\u2019s growing ambitions in the sport. Zuffa Boxing launches on Friday night at the UFC APEX, with Callum Walsh facing Carlos Ocampo in the main event of its first Paramount Plus broadcast, and further shows already planned for the coming months.<\/p>\n

Securing Opetaia represents a significant coup for White. The IBF cruiserweight champion is widely viewed as a future undisputed titleholder at 200lbs and a potential force in the heavyweight division should he eventually move up.<\/p>\n

Matchroom began working with Opetaia and Tasman Fighters in July 2023 and, while they were not involved in his most recent title defence against Huseyin Cinkara, they had partnered with the Australian across several fights, including previous world title defences.<\/p>\n

Speaking to IFL TV<\/a>, Smith addressed Opetaia\u2019s exit and struck a philosophical tone about losing a fighter to a new promotional rival.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is what it is. Fighters come, fighters go.<\/p>\n

In the sport of boxing, what you need is someone who\u2019s completely committed to you and will do anything for you. It\u2019s a commercial business at the same time, right?<\/p>\n

You have to think about it in a long term and not everyone does that. It\u2019s not the first time it\u2019s happened. It won\u2019t be the last time it happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

While acknowledging disappointment, Smith made it clear there is little value in dwelling on the loss as Matchroom looks ahead.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s so many opportunities. But it\u2019s not an endless pot of money because we otherwise we wouldn\u2019t be running the business and we\u2019re in this to run a business.<\/p>\n

\u201cAgain, I\u2019m not sitting here saying, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s irrelevant. Who cares at all?\u2019 But I\u2019m sitting here saying, \u2018Well, we got to now focus on the 94 other fighters we\u2019ve got.\u2019 Jai Opetaia\u2019s a brilliant fighter but is there other fighters, maybe not as good as him, but with bigger commercial opportunities? Yes.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Smith, the message is clear: Zuffa\u2019s arrival may be disruptive, but Matchroom\u2019s focus remains firmly on the fighters still under its banner and the business of moving forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Matchroom Boxing CEO Frank Smith insists he is not dwelling on the departure of Jai Opetaia to Zuffa…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":426969,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-426968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}