Dana White says he had no plan to embarrass Oscar De La Hoya at Ryan Garcia vs. Conor Benn, and he brought a story about Vince McMahon to make the point. Speaking to reporters Tuesday night after the latest episode of Dana White’s Contender Series, the UFC CEO pushed back on De La Hoya’s claim that he skipped the fight because White and his team were setting him up for a humiliating moment.
“I would never do that,” White said, per MMA Fighting. “Listen, my dislike for Oscar De La Hoya is very well known. He knows it, I know it, and it’s mutual.”
White said he would rather pick up the phone and tell De La Hoya he wasn’t welcome than invite him somewhere just to make him look bad. He knows how that feels, he said. For Ronda Rousey’s first WWE match at WrestleMania 34 in 2018, White flew to New Orleans, went to will call and was told there were no tickets for him. He started making calls and got seats eventually, but not good ones. “They end up getting me tickets, I’m in the f*cking bleachers,” White said. “I’ve been through all that. I wouldn’t do that to even an enemy.”
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The Garcia-Benn dispute
Garcia vs. Benn, a WBC title fight held last month, was technically a co-promotion between De La Hoya and White, but White’s Zuffa Boxing ran point. De La Hoya stayed home on fight night and said Golden Boy staff working the event felt disrespected. Reports after the event said De La Hoya did have tickets, just not the ringside seats a promoter would normally get.
White’s version: “Oscar knew he had tickets. Oscar knew where he was sitting.” He said De La Hoya was set to come in through the back to the celebrity VIP area like the other famous guests. He also mentioned WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman while addressing how people felt. On the complaints about Golden Boy staff, White had a shorter answer and pointed De La Hoya toward Zuffa Boxing co-owner Turki Alalshikh. “He should talk to Turki about that if that’s the case.”
The McMahon bleachers story has company. As EssentiallySports noted, White has said McMahon held veto power over combat sports programming on USA Network back in 2011, and that when White and Lorenzo Fertitta visited WWE headquarters to ask for his approval on a deal that would have put The Ultimate Fighter on the channel, McMahon said no. The UFC went to FOX instead. Today the UFC and WWE sit under the same TKO Group Holdings roof.
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De La Hoya doesn’t seem interested in a truce. On The Ariel Helwani Show he questioned whether Zuffa Boxing fits Garcia, called White “just Uncle Fester, who is right there in front of the camera,” and sided with Eddie Hearn in Hearn’s monthslong feud with White, which has run hot over White’s push into boxing and his comments on the upcoming Tyson Fury vs. Anthony Joshua fight. “I am Team Eddie right now because he’s cooking Dana,” De La Hoya said.
My take: White’s denial would carry more weight if a co-promoter of a WBC title fight hadn’t been seated somewhere other than ringside, because a spot in the celebrity VIP section is a fine seat for a rapper and a strange one for the guy whose company’s name is on the poster. That said, I believe White on the narrow point. His style has always been to tell you to your face that he can’t stand you, and the man still remembers which section of the Superdome he sat in eight years ago. If he wanted to snub De La Hoya, he’d have said so on a microphone first.
