Zuffa Boxing Signs Richardson Hitchins and Edgar Berlanga

IBF champion Hitchins and Berlanga added to the Zuffa roster

Richardson Hitchins and Edgar Berlanga have signed promotional agreements with Zuffa Boxing on multi-fight deals, adding two more established names to the new promotion’s roster.

Hitchins is the IBF junior welterweight champion and remains active at 140 pounds. Berlanga campaigns at super middleweight and has been a regular presence on major cards in recent years.

“This is a major step forward in my career,” Hitchins said. “With Zuffa Boxing in my corner, I’m going to show the world that I am a pound-for-pound, generational fighter.”

Berlanga and Hitchins are essentially tin soldiers. They look the part, and they definitely talk the part, but there is a brittle quality to their careers that Zuffa is likely going to expose, for better or worse. It feels like Zuffa is buying the brand of these fighters while being perfectly comfortable with the idea that the fighter might fail the test.

Zuffa is going to want to know if a guy is a star or a gatekeeper immediately. If Hitchins or Berlanga get cracked, Zuffa just moves on to the next person who did the cracking.

In the UFC, being vulnerable often makes for better TV. Fans love a fighter who can talk a big game but might get caught at any moment. It creates interest.

Even Berlanga and Hitchins aren’t pound-for-pound kings; they are loud enough to keep the cameras pointed at the Zuffa banner.

As we saw in the Gustavo Lemos fight, when someone refuses to be out-boxed and just brings pure, physical pressure, Hitchins can look very human.

Berlanga had that incredible first-round knockout streak that built the hype, but once he stepped up in class, the monster aura faded.

Zuffa is essentially a furnace. This isn’t the old boxing world where a promoter protects an investment for three years to build a mandatory shot. Under the TKO and Sela banner, the shelf life for loud but vulnerable is incredibly short.

If we look at how Zuffa is structuring their initial run, here is the reality for both: Edgar Berlanga’s survival time is roughly 12 to 18 Months. He has a bit more runway because his weight class (168) is a Zuffa priority.

Initially, Berlanga brings value to Zuffa because he can sell tickets in New York and Puerto Rico. However, the moment he loses a clear decision to a top-tier Zuffa signing or gets stopped, his value evaporates.

Zuffa doesn’t do rebuilding phases. Once the aura is gone, he becomes a high-priced gatekeeper, and that’s when they’ll cut bait.

Hitchins’s survival rate is around 2 to 3-fights because of the weight class situation. By forcing him to 147, Zuffa is putting him in a sink-or-swim scenario immediately.

If he goes up to welterweight and turns in a boring, defensive performance where he barely scrapes by or, worse, gets physically overwhelmed, Zuffa will lose interest fast. They want entertaining fights, not a 12-round track meet.

If he doesn’t adapt his style to be more “an-friendly in his first two fights at the new weight, he’ll be expendable before his first year is up.