Ben Shalom said Zuffa Boxing had been "extremely disruptive" after the promoter recently took fighter Sam Hickey from him, even though he said Hickey was under contract. Shalom said the move could lead to litigation, and warned that boxing in Britain should not be run by American conglomerates.
His comments on May 30 put Hickey at the center of a wider fight over who controls fighters and fight cards. Shalom said he was not just upset about one boxer leaving, but about what he sees as a pattern in which larger operators move in and ignore existing agreements.
"You can’t just go in and ignore that fighters are under contract and being paid by another promoter," Shalom said, arguing that Zuffa ignored contract rights in more than one case. He said it had overlooked what he called a matching right on Conor Benn and, on Chris Billam-Smith, an exclusive negotiation period as well as a matching right. He added that other fighters on that fight were "actually completely under contract," and said Zuffa would "go with anyone with a pulse."
The dispute matters because it goes beyond Hickey. In British boxing, promoter rights and fighter contracts are the rules that decide who can make a fight and who can walk away. Shalom said Zuffa was pushing into that system while leaving others to sort out the consequences later, a complaint that could become more serious if the dispute lands in court.
But his criticism came with an odd admission. Shalom said Zuffa was disrupting the sport, yet also said, "I can’t keep up [with Zuffa]," and that he did not know exactly what was going on. That leaves the key question unresolved: whether Hickey was legally free to move, or whether this becomes the kind of contract battle Shalom says is now likely.
Shalom said his concern was American conglomerates "deciding or wanting to decide or wanting to disrupt how the sport is run in this country." He added that "the IBF are probably the most honorable governing body there is," but said the way Zuffa was behaving was still "confusing." If he is right, the Hickey dispute may be only the first of several fights over who gets to decide boxing’s terms in Britain.
