It’s no secret that promoters Oscar De La Hoya and Dana White don’t exactly exactly get along.
Well, perhaps a bit more than that.
White in particular really seems to despise De La Hoya.
According to White, the beef originated for him when star boxer turned promoter Oscar De La Hoya told fans not to buy the Floyd Mayweather vs Conor McGregor fight back in 2017.
Before that the two were actually quite friendly and often helped promote one another’s events with positive comments in the media about different MMA or boxing matches that either were promoting.
But that all changed and White has blasted De La Hoya in recent months labelling him a ‘coke head’ and questioning his intelligence.
De La Hoya hasn’t been as personal in his jibes back to be fair, but one gets the impression that this beef is building into something bigger at the moment.
Speaking to RazzandJazzSports De La Hoya gave his take on where the feud originates from:
“You know, I think Dana has obviously has done a wonderful job in building his business (the UFC). You know, the fact that Golden Boy wanted to explore you know, the MMA world, maybe rubbed off a little in a bad way to Dana White. He didn’t like it. But that’s okay. That’s Dana White for you. I strongly feel that there is a tremendous opportunity in the MMA sector. I’m going to continue pursuing it. I’m going to be bullish in pursuing it.”
De La Hoya promoted his first MMA event last year and White has consistently said he will be getting into boxing this year.
Although it’s now April and it doesn’t look like he’ll directly do so himself.
It more seems like White is using smaller, relatively unknown boxing promoters to simply give him boxing content for his UFC Fight Pass app as he puts his own main UFC fights now on the ESPN+ app.
