Tickets went on sale Friday morning, and the announcement came straight from Turki Alalshikh. “Tickets are now on sale for Riyadh Zuffa Boxing 13, featuring middleweight world champion Carlos Adames taking on Welsh boxer Jerome Warburton in the main event, alongside an exciting lineup of undercard fight,” he wrote on X. He added the date and place: November 14, The Venue, Riyadh.
The official paperwork caught up a few hours later. UFC.com confirmed the bout as the headliner of Riyadh Season Zuffa Boxing 13, and the UFC News account on X declared the card official. The promotion’s materials spell the challenger’s name Gerome, which is the version used here.
The detail that matters most is in the BBC’s headline. Adames holds the WBC middleweight title, and this is a non-title bout. Whatever happens across those 10 scheduled rounds (FightNews listed the distance), the green belt stays out of play. For Warburton, a Welsh southpaw, that means the reward is the scalp and the main-event slot. For Adames, it means a paid night of work in a city where the money keeps flowing, with his title safe on the shelf.
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That structure tends to make fans skeptical, and fairly so. A champion taking a non-title fight against a lesser-known opponent can read as a stay-busy date. It can also go badly. A southpaw stance is its own problem to solve, and a loss would cost Adames nothing on paper while costing him plenty in leverage the next time he sits down to negotiate a real defense.
The co-feature gives the card some weight beneath the top line. Former world champion Jason Moloney meets Andres Teran at bantamweight, per UFC.com. The Saudi Press Agency also carried the news that Riyadh Season will host the event.
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This is the 13th Zuffa Boxing card, and the promotion is clearly leaning into Riyadh as a home base for its international schedule. The sources don’t say what comes after November 14 for Adames, or whether a mandatory or unification bout is waiting. What’s on the books is one champion, one Welsh lefty, and 10 rounds at The Venue with no title on the line.
