LAS VEGAS – Dana White and Eddie Hearn’s growing rivalry might bleed past their promoter work inside combat sports.
White, CEO of the UFC, doubled down on his willingness to get in the ring and box Hearn, further escalating the potential grudge match between promoters. White, who originally challenged Hearn, knows he shouldn’t be boxing at his age, but he’d make the exception with the Englishman.
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“It was serious and a joke,” White said regarding his callout to Hearn speaking with reporters at the UFC 326 post-fight interview. “I’m f*cking 56 years old. I shouldn’t be f*cking boxing anything. The last time I tried to get ready to box was for Tito (Ortiz). I was 38, and that was a f*cking nightmare, OK? Eddie Hearn is a p*ssy. He don’t want to fight or box anybody. Come on: F*cking Eddie Hearn boxing?”
A reporter almost immediately responded to White, telling him that Hearn was down too, and had publicly expressed it.
“Of course I’d do it, because how could you say no? Then you’d be a p*ssy, wouldn’t you?,” Hearn told IFL this past weekend in response to White’s original callout. “By the way, Netflix would pay an absolute fortune, or live on DAZN — the global home of boxing. So I’d probably make a fortune to do it. And if I got chinned, I get chinned. But I’d probably spark him out, to be fair.”
White didn’t back down in his reponse. He welcomes Hearn to fly across the pond and lace up the gloves in Las Vegas.
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“Listen, then fly out here, we’ll go over to the Apex and we can box,” White said. “Last night, Callum Walsh was telling me in Power Slap, ‘This thing would be huge. You should do it. I’ll fight on the undercard.’ You’ll fight in the undercard? If me and that, if two f*cking bums like us were going to do that, we’d be the first prelim of the night. It would be disrespectful to every fighter who’s on that card to be under us. We’d be the first prelim of the night, and that would be f*cking embarrasing.”
White and Hearn, at least publicly, seemed to have an amicable relationship. However, that all recently started to change with White’s push into boxing promoting with Zuffa Boxing. White’s push to change the Muhammad Ali Act in order to bring his controversial MMA practices into boxing has rubbed Hearn the wrong way, and they’ve been going at each other since in the media. Most recenty, Hearn signed to represent current UFC heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall, who’s had a rocky relationship with the UFC brass.
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Dana White serious about boxing ‘p*ssy’ Eddie Hearn: ‘Fly out here’
