Oleksandr Gvozdyk fought once for Zuffa Boxing, lost, and found out by email that he no longer worked there.
The former WBC light-heavyweight champion told vRINGe that TKO’s boxing promotion invoked a standard clause after his February defeat to Radivoje Kalajdzic.
They terminated the contract in February after a loss. That is, every promoter has the option that if a boxer loses, they have the right to terminate the contract. That’s exactly what they did.
After the fight, everyone was saying how great it was. That everything was great. I rested. I started preparing as planned, somewhere around May. And then, around April, they told me I’d received an email terminating the contract.
The fight was not a wipeout. Both men were making their Zuffa debuts and it turned into the sort of back-and-forth that usually earns a rematch. Gvozdyk scored two knockdowns and was ahead before Kalajdzic dropped him twice in the seventh and the referee waved it off with Gvozdyk still on his feet.
Kalajdzic got a future. He is booked against Craig Richards on September 26. Gvozdyk, at 39, is looking for a promoter.
He is not the first. Zuffa Boxing also terminated Robert Meriwether’s deal after his April loss to Tony Hirsch Jr., which makes this look less like a judgement on Gvozdyk than a policy.
Gvozdyk’s peak came in 2018, when he stopped Adonis Stevenson in the eleventh round to take the WBC title, a fight that left Stevenson with a serious brain injury. He defended once, lost the belt to Artur Beterbiev in 2019, and has fought sparingly since, including a decision loss to David Benavidez in 2024.
Zuffa Boxing is run by Dana White and WWE President Nick Khan under TKO, with Turki Alalshikh and Sela as partners.
