Chris Billam-Smith and Ryan Rozicki combined to ensure the organization’s first event outside the US was topped by a barnburner at Bournemouth International Centre.

The Ring’s No. 3 cruiserweight, Billam-Smith dug in to produce a composed performance against No. 6 Rozicki, who was pulled out by his corner after seven rounds.

It was a thrilling start to Zuffa’s attempt to disrupt the UK market, which is dominated by three major promotional forces in Matchroom, Queensberry and Boxxer.

White says he does not see those outfits as competition but did concede that Britain has dominated boxing in recent years.

“Right now with the level we’re at, we’re competing with the NFL, we’re competing with the NBA, we’re competing with Major League Baseball and with the NHL," he said. "In the United States the powerhouse over there is the NFL, and I’m sure when they were sitting in their executive offices and they saw the deal we got with Paramount, they would be thinking, ‘Wait a minute, there was $8 billion sitting over at Paramount that we didn’t get? We would have started putting games on on Tuesdays.’

“When you go outside the United States you start competing with soccer. When I think about competition, those are the people I’m looking at as competition. Watch the announcements we’re going to make in the next month and then judge us on January 1 on how we’ve done.

“The UK runs boxing right now. Boxing has become a very European sport over the last 15-20 years and the UK has dominated boxing. For us to come in to the UK and put on an event like tonight, we’re pretty pumped.”

Neither Billam-Smith or Rozicki were available for comment post fight as they were taken to hospital for precaution. But White faced the UK media for the first time as a boxing promoter instead.

“What starts to happen when we rip this sport apart and start to build from the ground up, with nights like tonight, it starts to create all these different storylines and it starts to line up different fights," he said. "We have a Sky deal which is a very big deal to us so we will be in the UK a lot.

“Already this year in the United States, we’re going to be adding more fights to Paramount. We’re five months into this thing and we’re already adding more shows to our Paramount deal and I hope the same thing happens with Sky.”

On the eve of the event, it was reported that Boxxer, Ben Shalom’s promotional company, had launched legal action against Zuffa after claiming they had poached Billam-Smith and Sam Hickey, who won on the undercard.

But when asked about Boxxer’s claim, White said: “That’s not true. That will play out publicly.”