UFC President Dana White hasn’t exactly made a reputation on getting on well with his competition and as plans continue to rumble on in the direction of his newest enterprise Zuffa Boxing, White has fired a salvo at one of the men who will be his competition.
Oscar De La Hoya and Dana White have long had complicated history with one another, stemming back from days when White says he would help promote events being put on by Golden Boy Boxing. However, what might have become a cosy relationship changed when De La Hoya became fiercely critical of the then-developing boxing match between Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather a couple of years ago.
“Nobody is going to accuse Oscar De La Hoya of being the brightest bulb on the porch, but let me kinda explain ‘cos I know this a boxing radio show, boxing guys get crazy you start attacking their heroes,” De La Hoya said to Sirius XM via World Boxing News.
“So me and Oscar used to be cool, right. He’d have these fights and I would literally promote his fights on my social media and I would obviously watch the fights and stuff like that. Then, we do Mayweather versus McGregor and this guy starts going out pleading with boxing fans not to watch it. I mean who does that? Just a real scumbag move. “Then, as soon as the fights over he says he wants to fight McGregor next. So the Mayweather versus McGregor was horrible for boxing but him fighting McGregor isn’t? Give me a break.”
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The antipathy continued, White says, when De La Hoya attempted to get into promoting mixed martial arts by holding last year’s fight between veterans Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz, which Ortiz won by first round knockout. White was a vocal critic of the fight when it was being promoted, and even more-so when it came to De La Hoya’s promotional tactics.
“Then he’s going to promote an MMA fight, good luck to him, anybody who wants to try and get into MMA good luck to you,” he said. “But then he says ‘we’re going to treat the athletes the way they should be treated – the UFC doesn’t. “He has a press conference, goes up on stage and he doesn’t even know any of the fighters’ names. Then the show is a complete disaster and flopped. After that, he comes out and starts lying, trying to say that it was very successful on digital. I mean I could just go on for days and days about what an absolute douche this guy is.
“People just don’t want to chat shit about Oscar except for me. ‘Well you have to respect his er…’ well I don’t have to respect anything from this guy anymore. The stuff that you respected from Oscar De La Hoya was 10 years ago, okay? That was ancient history. “The new Oscar De La Hoya is a scumbag, a liar and a complete moron. So that’s where Oscar De La Hoya and I are.”
