White confirmed following Opetaia’s lopsided points win at Meta Apex in Las Vegas that the sanctioning fee Opetaia’s team paid to the IBF in advance had not been returned to him as of late Sunday night. The UFC president and CEO, who is part of Zuffa Boxing’s leadership group, also stated that the IBF intended all along to strip Opetaia of its cruiserweight crown and used its perceived disrespectful placement of its belt at a press conference Friday night as “very odd and very unprofessional” rationale for not approving Opetaia-Glanton as a title fight.

“It’s pretty clear what they’re doing and what’s going on,” White said. “I see lawsuits coming, that’s what I see.”

The Ring reported Saturday that Opetaia paid the IBF a sanctioning fee in excess of $80,000 because he was led to believe he would fight Glanton for his IBF belt in addition to his Ring title and the inaugural Zuffa Boxing crown. Zuffa Boxing also agreed to pay all travel expenses to the event for an IBF supervisor, who flew home once the IBF announced its decision in a statement released late Friday night.

“I mean, you would think that would be the first thing that they would do,” White said regarding refunding Opetaia’s money. “The first thing you would think these guys would do is say, ‘We’re not sanctioning this fight. Our belt was disrespected. Here’s your money back.’ That hasn’t happened.”

As aggravated as White was with how the IBF handled Opetaia’s situation, he didn’t rule out continuing to work with sanctioning organizations if Zuffa Boxing’s decision-makers and fighters they sign are in agreement about pursuing title unification fights. Australia’s Opetaia repeatedly stated his goal remains to become undisputed cruiserweight champion, though that obviously would be more difficult assuming the IBF strips him.

Opetaia (30-0, 23 KOs) still wants to fight the winner of the bout between WBA/WBO champ Gilberto Ramirez (48-1, 30 KOs) and David Benavidez (31-0, 25 KOs) on May 2 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

“Well, he wanted this,” White said. “He wanted to fight for the [IBF] belt. I mean, when you think about it, the guy has, I think he’s fought for the IBF title like 11 times or something like that. He’s defended it, broke his jaw in two places one time and finished the fight. And that’s the way [the IBF is] gonna do it? It’s very odd and very unprofessional, so we’ll see how this thing plays out.”

In hindsight, there isn’t anything White believes Zuffa Boxing could’ve done differently to appease the IBF, which indicated in its statement that Opetaia fighting for Zuffa Boxing’s belt violated one of its bylaws and necessitated stripping him. The 30-year-old Opetaia’s signing was announced by Zuffa Boxing in January, but he continuously stated thereafter that he wanted to keep his IBF belt.

“Well, what could we have done differently?,” White said. “Just like [another reporter] said a minute ago, [the IBF] planned to do that – 110 percent planned to do that. First of all, the belt was sitting right in front of him the entire press conference. The belt could not have been more prominent. And it was in front of him because it’s his belt. Those two were fighting for the [vacant] Zuffa belt. And then he held [the IBF belt] in his hand during the faceoff. I mean, we did everything the right way and the way that it’s supposed to be done. So, what would we or how could we have done anything differently? I never disrespected them. I never said anything about them.

“And when you think about the WBC, when [president Mauricio Sulaiman] went out on that big tour, doing all the media, I never said anything about the WBC, other than, you know, I wasn’t interested in working with the sanctioning bodies. That was it. I never called anybody out specifically or said anything negatively about any of ‘em, until about 10 minutes ago, when I talked about basically the sport as a whole. And all of these guys are involved in the sport and they’re all f****** rinky-dink. Literally, every one of these people are the most rinky-dink, bottom-feeder, low-level people that I have ever, I don’t know what you’d wanna call it, been in business with.”

Keith Idec is a senior writer and columnist for The Ring. He can be reached on X @idecboxing.