The war of words between UFC president Dana White and Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya continued this week due to the fallout of the fight between Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz this past weekend.
Liddell, 48, suffered a brutal first round knockout courtesy of Ortiz in their trilogy fight promoted by De La Hoya’s company.
White erupted earlier this week when addressing De La Hoya while repeatedly calling him a ‘cokehead’ and blasting the boxing promoter for cashing a paycheck while putting Liddell in harm’s way when he shouldn’t have been fighting in the first place.
“Listen, I love Chuck Liddell and I don’t ever want to bad mouth Chuck Liddell or people even remotely think I’m bad mouthing Chuck Liddell,” White said. “Let’s say this first, I heard last week the cokehead ‘Oscar De La Weirdo’ is talking s–t that I don’t have any place to tell guys when to retire. First of all, it’s called friendship, you f–king cokehead. I’ve been friends with Chuck Liddell for 20 years.
“The reality is Chuck Liddell retired when he should have retired eight, nine years ago however long it was. Chuck Liddell’s almost 50 years old and has no business fighting anymore.”
Well De La Hoya responded with a statement released on Wednesday where he fired back at White essentially telling him to mind his own business and not to concern himself with Golden Boy crossing over into mixed martial arts.
“Dana is so small and threatened by our success with DAZN and now in MMA that he is bringing up news from a decade ago to try to stay relevant,” De La Hoya said. “Boxing has entirely rejected him. And, MMA fighters are now realizing they don’t have to risk their lives just so he can get rich.
“Golden Boy and I are moving forward and are bigger than ever. Dana should shut the f–k up and try to figure out how to save his own company.”
De La Hoya referencing DAZN is in relation to the five year, $365 million deal Golden Boy signed with the streaming service to air Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez’s next 11 fights.
As far as the venture into MMA, it’s tough to say how successful the first ever Golden Boy MMA card will end up being.
While the attendance at The Forum in Inglewood, Calif. was over 7,000, there’s still be no report of the live gate and the pay-per-view numbers haven’t been returned either.
That will ultimately judge the success of De La Hoya’s attempt to promote mixed martial arts but it appears he’s planning on moving forward with Golden Boy MMA regardless of the results of that first show.
