A $20 million offer is reportedly on the table for Dana White and Eddie Hearn to settle their differences the old-fashioned way, in a boxing ring. Yahoo Sports and ClutchPoints both ran reports Monday describing an official $20 million offer (ClutchPoints called it an official pot) for what both outlets labeled a rumored bout between the UFC CEO and the Matchroom Boxing boss.
That’s about all there is. Neither report, at least as headlined, says who made the offer, what the rules would be, or whether either man has said yes, no or simply laughed. Until one of them addresses it directly, this is a rumor with a price tag stapled to it.
Why These Two
The offer lands in the middle of a very real feud. White and Hearn spent months fighting over White’s role in Tyson Fury vs. Anthony Joshua, the heavyweight fight set for Dec. 11 at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales. MMA Fighting reported that the dispute at one point looked like it might wreck the fight entirely, though all sides appear to have smoothed things over.
Location was the biggest sticking point. Joshua and Hearn insisted on the United Kingdom, while White, who doesn’t represent either fighter, wanted Madison Square Garden. Hearn won that one. Speaking with Pat McAfee on Tuesday, White said “We’re promoting and producing the fight” and claimed fewer than 700 tickets were left when sales opened, which he called basically a sellout. He gave Hearn credit for pushing hard for the U.K. and acknowledged it worked, while still maintaining that MSG would have sold out just as quickly.
White also explained why Fury, who appeared at UFC Freedom 250 on the South Lawn of the White House this summer, didn’t announce the Joshua fight there as plenty of people expected. “Fckery [happened]. A lot of fckery has gone on since then,” White said. He added that “I knew these types of things were going to happen when I got involved in the sport of boxing.”
So the bad blood is documented. A promoter fight would be something else entirely.
The Awkward Timing
The $20 million figure is floating around at a moment when the UFC is taking pay criticism from its own champions. Middleweight titleholder Sean Strickland recently trashed the promotion over fighter pay and threatened to walk away from his belt, per MMA Fighting. Featherweight champ Alexander Volkanovski, who defends against Movsar Evloev at UFC 333 on Oct. 24, just put out a sponsored skit in which his fictional agent says a flop movie “still made more than what Dana pays.” A number that size attached to the boss’s name is going to get noticed in a few locker rooms.
My take: this fight doesn’t happen, and I’d bet on that with real money before I’d bet on either man actually lacing up. Promoters get rich making other people’s fights, and the smartest play for both White and Hearn is letting a $20 million rumor do free publicity work for a Cardiff card White already describes as basically sold out. If somebody does drag them into a ring, I’m asking for two-minute rounds and three judges who know a 10-8 requires actual damage. The fight that’s real is Fury vs. Joshua on Dec. 11.
