Dana White is no fan of Oscar De La Hoya, but he wants to clear the air around why the boxing legend wasn’t at T-Mobile Arena to watch his fighter Ryan Garcia.
Garcia’s highly anticipated matchup with Conor Benn was a co-promotion between White’s Zuffa Boxing and De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions, who currently have Garcia under contract. White and De La Hoya have had an ongoing feud for years, raising the question of how they might interact on fight night. As it turns out, they didn’t have to as De La Hoya was not in attendance for Saturday’s event.
Boxing reporter Dan Rafael reported that De La Hoya was denied a credential, but as far as White knows, the Golden Boy Promotions boss was never expected to show and his organization had nothing to do with his absence.
“I heard there’s some rumblings,” White said at Saturday’s post-fight press conference. “Let me explain something to you: I do not like De La Hoya and De La Hoya does not like me. I would never disrespect him and say, ‘Oh, he shows up here and we treat him like shit.’ I would call him on the phone and say, ‘Hey, don’t f*cking show up to this event because we’re not going to treat you well.’
“That was not the case. Why he didn’t show up, I don’t know.”
Garcia was also asked about De La Hoya’s absence, but couldn’t offer any more details.
“I thought he was going to be here,” Garcia said. “They told me that he had a seat and I actually invited him to walk out with me. I thought that was going to be iconic. Everyone was asking where he was and then just to have him walk out with me, it would have been special.
“But it is what it is. It didn’t happen. I’m here just to do my job. I don’t really try to think of that too much. Would it have been cool to see him there? Yeah.”
The evening was capped off by a pair of impressive knockouts, with Garcia earning a one-sided win over Benn to retain the WBC welterweight title, and Jai Opetaia successfully defending his Zuffa cruiserweight belt against Noel Mikaelian via a finish in the ninth round.
Ahead of Opetaia’s fight, promoter Don King announced that Mikaelian’s WBC title would not be on the line, adding an odd wrinkle that White and his team had to deal with.
“All this stuff is a work in progress,” White said. “Everybody keeps saying to me, ‘I thought you weren’t working with the organizations,’ and I’m not going to be told what to do by anybody. I’m not going to be told how to run my business by anybody, but a lot of these kids grew up or are just at a level where they could fight for some of these belts and if these guys are willing to work with us, we’ll figure out how to make it happen. We want to do right by the fighters, so we’ll see how it all plays out.
“But you know how this goes. Any of you that have covered boxing for any amount of time, you know how the bullshit goes.”
