Dana White ‘shocked’ how easily he’s trampled over the boxing establishment so far: ‘This is like beating up babies’
Zuffa Boxing held its third event on Sunday in Las Vegas, and Dana White is shocked how quickly his new promotion is making an impact in the sport while the established figureheads have largely rolled over and played dead thus far.
Following another night of fights at the Meta APEX, White addressed the reaction he’s seen from other promoters including Eddie Hearn and Oscar De La Hoya not to mention sanctioning bodies like the WBC after Zuffa Boxing first launched. While everybody is talking, White says he’s been amazed at how little resistance he’s actually faced from the people who are supposed to be his biggest competitors.
“There hasn’t been any pushback,” White said at the Zuffa Boxing 3 post fight press conference. “This is like beating up babies. I feel like I came in and I’m beating up babies. I expected more. I expected some pushback. I expected them to be more game.
“They’re all way out of their league. Like absolutely, positively out of their league. I’m actually a little shocked.”
While White says he’s stayed focused on what he’s building with Zuffa Boxing, there’s undoubtedly been a lot of chatter from promoters like Hearn, who has taken public shots at him and the new promotion numerous times since officially launching in January.
But talk is all that’s really been happening and White believes it’s just further proof that Zuffa Boxing is making everybody in the sport really nervous right now.
“They don’t stop talking, the WBC and Eddie Hearn and all this shit that [Oscar] De La Hoya talks,” White said. “We all know [De La Hoya is] f*cking mentally ill. The guy’s talking all this shit and his place is in foreclosure, he’s suing his fighter to try to stay with him. Has he done a clapback Thursday recently? I would f*cking love to see an episode of clapback Thursday this Thursday from Oscar De La Hoya. Everybody feels it. It’s already happening. It’s going to be a fun year.”
White has often railed on the current state of boxing, which he has criticized as a sport that feels like a “going out of business sale” with every major event.
That model may have produced a few massive cards or fights each year but nothing was ever truly planning for the future, which is what White says Zuffa Boxing is doing already.
“At the end of the day, you guys are supposed to be the experts about what’s going on,” White said. “Like I said, I’ll lay out a body of work this year and then you can judge me by how this thing plays out. Everybody knows that this thing has been broken for a long time.
“I said what I was going to do. I never said anything bad about the WBC or the IBF or any of them. I just said I’m not going to do business with them. I’m going to do my own thing.”
White also fired back at Hearn’s recent comments where he blasted Zuffa Boxing for introducing its own titles with the first major championship fight booked for March when Jai Opetaia battles Brandon Glanton for the cruiserweight title at Zuffa Boxing 4.
“I saw Eddie Hearn saying the belt is cringey and all this stuff,” White said. “I don’t think anybody looks at Eddie Hearn and says ‘oh this guy’s a visionary.’ The guy’s been in boxing forever. I look at him like most politicians. You’ve done nothing in the sport except stay in the lane and play by all the rules — you ended up becoming part of the problem is what happened.
“I don’t want to sit here and smash Eddie Hearn or anything, but Eddie Hearn works for his dad. He works for dad and I don’t think he’s come in and ever had any type of vision whereas we do and we’re going to change the entire sport. I understand the people who are the status quo in boxing don’t like it. But it doesn’t mean they can’t still do their thing. If your thing is as good as you think it is, and you are as good as you think you are, then do your thing. Good luck to you. I’m going to do my thing and they’re going to do theirs.”
White feels like veteran promoters such as Hearn had plenty of opportunities to carve out a space of their own in boxing but instead just fell back into the same old patterns that have defined the sport for decades.
With Zuffa Boxing now in business, White sees Hearn and many others feeling the heat that the business is changing and they all may be shifting into survival mode. That includes WBC president [Mauricio] Sulaimán, who has been in headlines recently for stripping champions of titles for not paying promotional dues and complaining that he wasn’t treated properly when he attended the Terence Crawford-Canelo Alvarez fight this past September.
“The sport has been out there for over 100 years,” White said. “There’s plenty of guys that are involved in the sport, there’s plenty of money in the sport, Eddie Hearn and his dad have a lot of money. It’s not like they can’t compete. They can’t compete because they don’t know how to compete. There’s no vision there. I don’t know how else to explain it other than that.
“Listen, I’m sitting here my third fight in. I’m either right or I’m wrong. We’ll find out. I keep saying it over and over again. At the end of the year, judge us by what we’ve done this year. We’re three fights in and people are asking all these questions and this Sulaimán guy is incredible. He is incredible. He’s the greatest PR guy for how f*cked up boxing is of all time. He’s incredible.”
