Brooklyn native Edgar Berlanga will seek boxing redemption this Sunday at Infosys Theater at Madison Square Garden when he fights Steven Butler (38-5-1, 32 KOs) of Montreal, Canada, in a 10-round super-middleweight clash.
The bout comes after the Puerto Rican power-puncher (25-2, 18 KOs) suffered a crushing loss to British boxer Hamzah Sheeraz (24-0-1, 19 KOs) via a fifth-round knockout last July at Louis Armstrong Stadium in Queens.
“Working hard, like always,” Berlanga said to the AmNews while still in training camp. “It feels good to be back and getting ready to headline in my city again.”
The match with Butler will be his 11th fight in New York City. Berlanga signed with newcomer Zuffa Boxing in April, whose CEO, Dana White, became a global sports figure as a central architect of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), the world’s leading mixed martial arts (MMA) organization. The company staged its first professional promotion in January.
“Everything had made sense, business-wise,” Berlanga said. “Even before [White] was going into boxing, I always gave him his props because I felt like Dana knew how to build a fighter, how to build a brand. I feel like he’s very, very legendary when it comes to that.”
Berlanga, who was raised in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, lost the first two fights of his career in consecutive summers, falling to all-time great Canelo Alvarez in September 2024, then last July to Sheeraz.
“I wasn’t getting too emotional about the situation, because it happens to the best fighters, it happens to all the champions,” he reflected. “Manny Pacquiao, one of the greatest, got knocked out bad by [Juan Manuel] Marquez, still came back, still became a world champ. The list goes on, with a lot of fighters that got stopped.
“Óscar De La Hoya, Félix Trinidad, Miguel Cotto. All these guys bounced back. Rolly Romero, a current champ right now, he got knocked out twice by Gervonta Davis and Pit Bull (Isaac Cruz), and people thought his career was over, and he came and beat Ryan Garcia. You can never count out [any] fighter.”
It would be a mistake to count out a boxer who just turned 29 in May. With a new promoter and new marketing opportunities on the table for Berlanga, his boxing career appears to have several chapters left to write.
Sunday’s Zuffa Boxing 09 will mark the promotion’s New York City debut and will feature another Brooklynite, undefeated former super lightweight champion Richardson Hitchins (20-0, 8 KOs), versus Mexican Ricardo Salas (24-2-2, 18 KOs) in a 12-round welterweight contest. Hitchins will move up to 147 pounds after he was a late scratch in February in his IBF super lightweight title defense against Óscar Duarte due to an undisclosed illness.
The 28-year-old Hitchins also signed with Zuffa Boxing in April. The promotion made arguably its biggest signing earlier this month when Newark, New Jersey’s, undefeated, four-division world champion Shakur Stevenson joined its roster. Stevenson’s last fight was on January 31, 2026, when he dominated Teofimo Lopez to win the WBO super lightweight title in arguably the best victory of his career.
