Zuffa Boxing 9 brings Berlanga vs. Butler and Hitchins vs. Salas to Madison Square Garden

Zuffa Boxing 9 landed at Madison Square Garden with a card built around two things New York boxing fans typically prioritize, a hometown presence and a featured marquee matchup. The event, held Sunday, July 26, at the Infosys Theater, was headlined by a super middleweight bout between Edgar Berlanga and Steven Butler, with the rest of the program stacked to keep the pace moving across multiple divisions.

The co-main event put another New York name in front of the home crowd. Richardson Hitchins, billed as the hometown favorite, faced Ricardo Salas in a 12-round welterweight matchup. The format matters here because 12 rounds tends to separate fighters who can sustain adjustments from those who rely primarily on early momentum.

Zuffa Boxing also highlighted the next wave at middleweight, pairing rising contender Jalil Hackett with veteran Sergiy Derevyanchenko. Derevyanchenko’s reputation as a durable opponent has long been rooted in the kind of pressure and defensive problem-solving that can test whether younger contenders have more than one look. Hackett, positioned as the rising piece of the event, was tasked with converting promise into clean, round-by-round execution.

Beyond the top three bouts, ’s event coverage framework emphasized results and scorecards as the centerpiece of the day’s reporting. The league-backed release indicates the show concluded with published scoring and post-fight highlights, a sign that the promotion is continuing to treat Zuffa Boxing events as full, trackable entries for fans who follow outcomes, not just build-up.

From a sport perspective, these matchups help define where fighters sit within the super middleweight, welterweight, and middleweight conversations. Berlanga vs. Butler sets a key benchmark for how a featured super middleweight option handles a stylistically unfamiliar test, while Hitchins vs. Salas functions as a credibility check that can accelerate or stall momentum depending on how cleanly the challenger sustains work over 12.

There is one caveat for readers looking for specifics: the publicly visible information in the release packet provided here confirms the event, venue, and bout placements, but does not include the fight-by-fight score breakdown in the material available for this draft. To get the exact scoring and the complete sequence of results, readers would need to consult the results and scorecards page directly.

Looking ahead, the immediate watch item is how each featured bout reshapes next-step matchmaking. In cards like Zuffa Boxing 9, the most important question is not only who won, but how they won, whether it reads as a controlled statement or as a performance with unanswered questions. That, in turn, determines which fighters get faster paths to higher-profile matchups and which ones return to the grind for another accumulation of rounds and résumés.