Boxing has spent 130 days without an IBF cruiserweight champion, ever since the sanctioning body stripped Jai Opetaia of the title he’d defended just days earlier. In that time, the fallout has turned into a federal lawsuit, pulled in Opetaia’s former promoter, and named three rival sanctioning bodies as alleged co-conspirators. The one person conspicuously staying out of it is the man who signed Opetaia in the first place.

“That’s Jai’s…that’s Jai’s lawsuit,” Dana White said when a reporter brought his attention to the issue at the post-fight presser of Zuffa 09. “We obviously support him and back him and everything else, but yeah, it has nothing to do with me.”

It’s a notably hands-off response given how directly the lawsuit traces back to White’s own promotion. Opetaia’s 123-paragraph complaint, filed July 14 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada, centers on what happened after the cruiserweight signed with Zuffa Boxing, and White is not named anywhere in it. The suit names only the IBF as a defendant, but identifies a broader group as alleged co-conspirators: the WBC, WBA, and WBO, along with their presidents, Mauricio Sulaiman, Gilberto Mendoza, and Gustavo Olivieri, and Opetaia’s former promoter, Matchroom’s Eddie Hearn.

That hasn’t stopped the rest of the cast from reacting. Hearn, cited in the complaint as one of the people who allegedly worked to damage Opetaia financially and reputationally, has responded the loudest, and with a threat of his own.

Eddie Hearn Threatens A Defamation Countersuit Against His Former Fighter

“I’ve instructed my lawyers today to write to his lawyers and let him know that you withdraw me from that complaint against the IBF, you retract any statement, or I’ll sue you for defamation,” Hearn said in an interview with iFL TV.

It isn’t an empty threat on his part. In 2022, Hearn filed a $100 million defamation lawsuit against Jake Paul after Paul claimed Hearn’s team had bribed a judge, so he has a track record of following through on this kind of legal pressure.

The underlying dispute stretches back to March. Opetaia, unbeaten at 30-0 with 23 stoppages, was the reigning IBF champion when he signed with Zuffa Boxing, fresh off an eighth-round knockout of Huseyin Cinkara. Two weeks later, Zuffa booked him against Brandon Glanton for its newly created cruiserweight belt on March 8. Opetaia paid the IBF its $73,000 sanctioning fee the morning of March 6, only for the organization to withdraw its approval that same night, hours after the final press conference and less than 48 hours before the fight. The IBF returned the fee the next day, then formally stripped Opetaia of the title on March 19, arguing the bout had been promoted around Zuffa’s belt in a way it couldn’t recognize.

Opetaia’s lawsuit argues that sequence wasn’t a straightforward rules dispute but a coordinated response to punish him for signing with Zuffa in the first place, and to warn other fighters against doing the same. His lawyers point to alleged chat logs between the parties, along with public comments they say foreshadowed the outcome, including Hearn reportedly predicting before the Glanton fight that sanctioning bodies “might make a stance sooner than you think.” He’s asking the court to reinstate him as IBF champion, award damages, attorneys’ fees and costs, and block the IBF from naming a new cruiserweight titleholder while the case is pending.

For White, the calculation looks simple by comparison. Zuffa Boxing gained a major name in Opetaia and delivered on its part of the deal. Whatever legal fight follows over IBF politics is one he’s making clear he intends to watch from a distance, not join.

With no hearing date yet set and Hearn’s legal threat still unresolved, whether Opetaia’s case forces a real reckoning with boxing’s sanctioning bodies, or ends with him standing alone against a threatened countersuit, will likely become clearer as both sides’ lawyers get involved in the coming weeks.