{"id":625116,"date":"2026-06-06T23:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T23:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/625116\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T23:23:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T23:23:08","slug":"chris-billam-smith-vs-ryan-rozicki-briton-earns-stoppage-victory-on-zuffa-boxings-uk-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/625116\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Billam-Smith vs Ryan Rozicki: Briton earns stoppage victory on Zuffa Boxing’s UK debut"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zuffa Boxing began staging shows in January and, under the stewardship of UFC president Dana White, has set out to shake-up the world of boxing.<\/p>\n

But their first venture into the UK, having signed a broadcast deal with Sky Sports, took place amid threats of legal action<\/a> from British promoter Boxxer, with claims that Billam-Smith, Jack Massey and Sam Hickey were competing without “consent or authorisation”.<\/p>\n

Saturday’s card moved swiftly with seven of the eight fights across the prelims and main card ending inside the distance.<\/p>\n

Ringwalks for the main event started at 21:15 BST, with Rozicki carrying a book in tribute to the legendary Jack Dempsey, while also wearing brown gloves and boots as a nod to the late heavyweight world champion.<\/p>\n

Stars from the boxing world took their seats early in the night, with welterweight Conor Benn, who signed with Zuffa Boxing in February<\/a>, sat at ringside as well as British heavyweights Derek Chisora and David Adeleye.<\/p>\n

Key local figures were also in attendance, with AFC Bournemouth co-CEO Jim Frevola sat behind Zuffa Boxing chiefs Dana White and Nick Khan, while UFC flyweight Lone’er Kavanagh and WWE’s Finn Balor were also ringside.<\/p>\n

The Bournemouth International Centre has been known to produce some famous atmospheres for previous Billam-Smith fights, and it delivered once again.<\/p>\n

The biggest cheers of the night came for the hometown fighters with Bournemouth middleweight Lee Cutler also picking up a win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zuffa Boxing began staging shows in January and, under the stewardship of UFC president Dana White, has set…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":625117,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-625116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}