Zuffa Gets Its Middleweight: WBC Champ Carlos Adames Signs On, and My Therapist Is Billing Overtime

The Dominican champion is The Ring's No. 1 middleweight, and he just signed a multi-fight deal with Dana White's boxing outfit. The terms weren't disclosed. My blood pressure was.

Satire notice: Sam Trumpatelo is a fictional AI parody columnist, not a real person and not Dan Rafael. The political jokes below are opinion and comedy, not news. The boxing facts are real and sourced at the bottom.

Zuffa Boxing wanted a world champion it could build around. On Tuesday it got one. I found out while doing my morning routine, which is oat milk latte, NPR tote bag, and screaming into a throw pillow about whatever Donald Trump posted at 3 a.m.

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WBC middleweight champion Carlos "Caballo Bronco" Adames has signed a multi-fight promotional contract with Zuffa, the company announced Oct. 13. His first fight under the new banner will be announced "shortly," according to the release. In boxing, "shortly" means the same thing "two weeks" means in a Trump press conference. It means nobody has signed anything yet.

Now, you know Dana White. Everybody knows Dana White. The man has spoken for Trump at Republican National Conventions and sat cageside with him at UFC events, and that's all on the public record. So yes, the second I read "Dana White's boxing company" my Trump Derangement Syndrome flared up like a bad knee. My doctor says it's chronic. My doctor also drives a Subaru with a "COEXIST" sticker, so you can guess where he stands.

But I'm a professional. Mostly. Here's the résumé they're buying.

Adames is 25-1-1 with 18 knockouts. He's 32, from Elías Piña in the Dominican Republic, and has been a pro for 11 years. He hasn't lost in seven fights since moving up to 160 in 2021. The Ring ranks him No. 1 in the division.

He stopped Julian Williams in nine rounds. Then he made three WBC defenses, including a draw with Hamzah Sheeraz last year and a decision over Austin "Ammo" Williams in March. His only loss was a close decision to Patrick Teixeira at 154 back in November 2019, and a seventh-round knockdown decided it. Adames accepted the result. Imagine that. A man lost a close one and didn't claim the judges were rigged. Somebody get this guy a civics award.

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Before all that he had more than 200 amateur fights, with gold at the 2012 Pan American Youth Championships and the 2015 Jose Cheo Aponte Tournament. This guy was not built in a lab, and he definitely wasn't built by a guy who says he knows more about boxing than the boxers. You know the type.

He made it official the way fighters do, in the Zuffa release:

"This is a new chapter in my career, and I'm here to make history. Zuffa Boxing is building something special, and I want to be part of it," Adames said. "I'm ready to face the best fighters in the world on the biggest stage. The best of 'Caballo Bronco' is yet to come."

"Make history." Not "make it great again." I noticed. I'm choosing to read that as a quiet act of resistance. He almost certainly didn't mean it that way. I don't care. Let me have this.

Now let's talk about the part nobody put in the press release.

The money. No purse numbers, no contract length, and no idea what "multi-fight" actually means. Zuffa is a joint venture between TKO and Sela, with Dana White and Nick Khan running it and Paramount+ carrying the fights in the U.S., Canada and Latin America. That is a lot of money in one room. As a card-carrying progressive, my position is simple: tax the promoters, fund the fighters. The guy getting punched in the face should be the top earner in the building. Call it trickle-up economics. Bernie would want a ringside seat.

The belt. The WBC has its own ideas about mandatory challengers, and it doesn't care who promotes you. Signing with a new promoter doesn't change that. If the Sheeraz draw left anyone with unfinished business, it'll come up again. Checks and balances. Somebody in this country has to respect them, and apparently it's going to be a sanctioning body in Mexico City.

The pipeline. The Dominican Republic keeps turning out middleweights who hit like this, and somehow nobody in Washington has slapped a tariff on them yet. Give Trump a slow news week. I can already picture the Truth Social post in my nightmares, all caps, three exclamation points. (That's my imagination, folks, not a real post and not a real policy. My imagination needs a nap.)

Bottom line: Zuffa's boxing project needed a real champion with a real ranking, and it got one in his prime who hasn't lost since 2019. I can be furious about the guest list at Mar-a-Lago and still admit this is a good signing for the sport. That's called nuance. Look it up, it's in every blue-state library they haven't banned books from yet. Whether Adames gets the big fights and big paydays he's talking about depends on who they put in front of him next. When it's announced, you'll read it here, right after I finish my breathing exercises.

Check out Adames' boxer page on Boxbid and Hamzah Sheeraz's while you wait. You can sponsor a fighter directly on Boxbid, which is the most grassroots, small-donor thing in combat sports. No super PAC required. Once his Zuffa debut has a name and a date, it's going on the Guess the Purse board, and you can call the winner in Fantasy Boxing. Then tell the community who you'd feed him first. Polls close when I say so. Unlike some people, I'll accept the results.

Sources: Zuffa Boxing press release, "Zuffa Boxing Signs WBC Middleweight World Champion Carlos Adames" (Oct. 13, 2026); Zuffa Boxing on X (https://x.com/Zuffa_Boxing/status/2110068053316878739); ESPN on Adames-Teixeira (https://www.espn.com/boxing/story/_/id/28188624/carl-frampton-scores-impressive-win-patrick-teixeira-upsets-carlos-adames); record cross-checked with Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Adames); Los Angeles Times on White at the 2016 RNC (https://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-ufc-dana-white-donald-trump-rnc-20160719-snap-story.html); AP on the 2020 RNC (https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-virus-outbreak-global-trade-shootings-dc-wire-95d12c0361abd7720200352254522651); AP on the 2024 RNC (https://apnews.com/article/trump-republican-national-convention-nomination-assassination-attempt-5f1f337ac39477e9d1c53d3e027edda3); AP on Trump cageside with White at UFC 314 (https://apnews.com/article/trump-ufc-miami-fight-sports-6461901bb3d5f2eec477674d02333a7f)