Zuffa Boxing’s signing of Conor Benn was a major statement from Dana White in his ongoing rivalry with Matchroom Boxing’s Eddie Hearn. After a tense war of words in recent months, UFC CEO White managed to hit Hearn where it really hurt by taking one of Hearn’s most prized assets.
Hearn responded this past Friday with a shock link-up of his own: A commercial advisory role with the UFC heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall. Although Aspinall is still contracted to the UFC, the move represents the first play from Matchroom into the MMA world, and doing so by trying to rebuild a psychologically damaged fighter in a division the UFC has struggled with in recent years.
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“I actually couldn’t believe how broken this guy’s confidence was in Tom Aspinall,” Hearn told Uncrowned’s “The Ariel Helwani Show” on Monday. “Like, the first conversation that we had, he actually said to me, ‘Why? Why are you interested in me? You know my reputation. [The UFC has] stitched me up. I’m just like damaged goods at the moment.’
“I’m like, ‘You’re what? Are you for real? You’re the UFC heavyweight champion. Damaged goods?’ [Aspinall said,] ‘Well, you know, they’ve hung me out to dry, and they’ve run this narrative on me,’ and he was just down in the dumps. And actually, the difference between that initial conversation and seeing him at the press conference last week — [he] was a completely different man. He is absolutely buzzing, and right now he just can’t wait to get back, whereas before I found a guy [who] actually didn’t really want to come back.”
Aspinall was poked in both eyes by Ciryl Gane in the first round of their UFC heavyweight title fight at UFC 321 this past October, causing the fight to disappointingly be cut short and ruled a no-contest.
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What followed was a swarm of unjustified criticism of Aspinall, who many claimed didn’t want to continue with the fight. White was among the doubters, alluding to Aspinall quitting rather than being forced to stop fighting due to a legitimate medical injury.
The comments didn’t sit too well with the UFC champ, who has admitted in the aftermath that he has felt let down by his promoter. The situation was a driving force behind Aspinall’s decision to widen his team through the addition of Hearn’s Matchroom, in order to maximize his commercial potential outside of the UFC — and to strengthen his position in negotiations with the MMA leader.
“I’m looking at him, I’m going through his UFC contract,” Hearn said. “I’m talking about the numbers that he’s made over the last three, four, five fights. And I’m just sitting there, I’m like, I actually can’t believe what’s going on. I can’t believe that you’ve had your eyes virtually gouged out, and you’ve been really, in my opinion, chastised by the organization, and a narrative has been run on you. You’ve had three [eye] operations and you’re sitting there feeling sorry for yourself, and I can tell what kind of individual you are, and I was just like, ‘I want to represent you here. Forget me vs. Dana — I want to represent you.'”
Perhaps intentionally, a focal point of Aspinall’s launch press conference with Matchroom Talent Agency was centered around his UFC purses and how they dwarfed in comparison to boxers’ earnings and what TKO — the parent company of the UFC and Zuffa Boxing — is paying Benn, reportedly $15 million, to face Regis Prograis next month in London.
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“Obviously, it’s difficult for me because I come from a world where, if a fighter was generating that much revenue into a show, they would be making five, six, seven times more than they’re making in those UFC contracts,” Hearn insisted. “As I said the other day, I’ve got guys — Tom Aspinall headlined [London’s] O2 Arena and they actually broke records for the gate at the O2 Arena. It was on pay-per-view in the UK. It was on ESPN at the time in America. He’s making less money than probably half the amount of money that I would pay a guy to fight for the British title at York Hall, Bethnal Green, in front of 1,200 people.
“I just can’t see a world now, especially with [TKO] in boxing and they’re paying — they’ll be paying Conor Benn 10-15 times more than the UFC heavyweight champion. [The UFC is] going in with a rights fee of tens of millions from Paramount, a gate of $10 million or a site fee of $20 or $30 million, [and UFC fighters are] making 10 times less [than Benn].
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“They’re going to have big problems in that respect. And I think moving forward, that’s going to be more interesting with young fighters coming into the system who might not be willing to sign up to a contract like that.”
It has been Hearn’s intention to try and spark a revolt among UFC fighters by attempting to show them just how little of a percentage they are making in comparison to the money generated by UFC events, particularly after the company inked a historic $7.7 billion seven-year media rights deal with Paramount this past year.
Hearn’s strategy achieved some success after Zuffa announced the signing of Benn. Since that news dropped, Michael “Venom” Page, Aljamain Sterling, Israel Adesanya and Sean O’Malley, among others, have made comments questioning Benn’s $15 million deal and why they aren’t seeing a pay increase in their fights, despite the UFC earning substantially more in its new television deal.
Those fighters, however, are only the ones who have spoken out loud. Hearn believes there are many more UFC fighters who are just as disappointed learning about Benn’s deal with Zuffa, and they, too, could be looking to bolster their business team in the coming months.
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“Dana White sat on a press conference last night and he says, ‘You know, Conor Benn making all this money, it’s great for UFC fighters,'” Hearn said. “Like, how? I mean, basically every UFC fighter is looking at that going, ‘This just doesn’t make sense.’ And you can’t just hide behind the fact of, ‘Oh, Turki [Alalshikh]’s paying that bill, so it’s not really [the same].’ No, it’s the same companies. I’m enjoying sitting back, looking at all the press conferences and just being baffled by what I’m hearing.
“We’ve had — I think actually today was one more — we’ve had a dozen fighters approach us from the UFC asking to speak to us, have representation, could we just educate them a little bit about the space, what’s going on. ‘We need some help.’ We’re not going to sign all those guys, but we will be signing a handful more of UFC fighters, no doubt about it, because it’s an interesting space for us.
“Probably for the first time in my career, and this was very much the case with the Tom Aspinall stuff, I’m going to work in some silence. Because I need to get this right, and it’s going to be very, very interesting what’s about to unfold over the next couple of months. … But right now I look at the landscape, going, ‘This is crazy, what I’m seeing.’ It’s almost like a revolution, and it’s going to be really interesting.”
There are some in the industry who believe Hearn’s war of words with White serves as a natural precursor to an MMA venture for Matchroom. Although Hearn did not rule out such a move in the future for his British sports empire, he did confirm that it was not in their immediate plans.
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“But we know that if we had the same model [in MMA as we do in boxing], we would be paying fighters 80% of the pot and not 20% of the pot,” Hearn said. “But you know, [becoming an MMA promoter is] not on the horizon. I’m not sitting here saying we’re going into MMA and we’re going to give all the fights. We’ll learn and we’ll understand, and perhaps in the future you will see us in that space. But in answer to your question, if the same revenue was in the pot [in Matchroom MMA events as it is UFC shows], we would be paying close to 10 times more.”
Hearn has become a focal point of White’s most recent interviews and press conferences, even earning a starring role at this past Sunday’s Zuffa Boxing 4 post-fight press conference, which saw White insist that Hearn is not a rival of his, even downplaying his significance in combat sports as just another “manager.”
“Things couldn’t be going better for me at the moment with him,” Hearn responded. “He just basically can’t keep my name out of his mouth. I mean, I’ll be honest, boxing’s not for him, right? It’s the worst business in the world. And I didn’t expect him to implode this early. I almost sit there — I mean, that was one clip, but there’s been four or five clips that I’ve seen. He literally hasn’t stopped talking about me.
“He’s called me a p**** five or six times. He’s called me out for a fight. A fight, right? And then he says that I’m not competition. I’ll be honest with you — I agree with him, because in boxing right now, as I’ve said before, he cannot lace my boots. He’s sitting there and spinning a narrative like he’s created these unbelievable blockbuster shows in stadiums. He ain’t out [of] the garage yet. Literally four shows in and absolute bang-average content.”
Dana White (left) and boxing promoter Eddie Hearn in friendlier days.
(Kieran Cleeves – PA Images via Getty Images)
White’s first four boxing events have taken place at the Meta Apex in Las Vegas with limited crowds and unspectacular lineups, although White correctly points out that the majority of U.S. boxing promoters — Top Rank, Golden Boy, Premier Boxing Champions — have no major television deal and have promoted one or zero shows thus far in 2026, compared to his four events.
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White and Hearn had a cordial relationship over the years, but in recent months, after White formally entered the boxing space, their relationship has turned on its head. As Hearn alluded to, the two promoters have even shown interest in an unlikely boxing match, which, although difficult to imagine materializing, would be a first-rate entertainment product.
“To say that we aren’t a competitor of his is just the most bizarre statement, because we’re coming off sellout shows in the UK, sellout shows in America, big world championship fights,” Hearn said. “He’s literally — I mean, the best way that I could describe what Zuffa is doing at the moment is, if we were in the COVID era right now, I would actually say they’re doing OK, because that’s what it is.
“And they come out and they [say we’ve] got no vision? You literally can’t even be bothered to leave your office, where you’ve got 200 people watching, supposedly a world championship fight that, by the way, wasn’t actually a world championship fight. And of the four cards that I’ve seen — nothing. Talk about how I haven’t done anything or impressed them. What have we seen?
“Like, honestly, if you listen to it, it is literally like every show they’ve done is a stadium sellout with pound-for-pound stars in unification fights, and it’s just set the sport alight. They have done nothing at all. And all I’ve seen is Dana coming out, losing his rag, blood pressure going through the roof, calling me this, calling me that, but not actually doing anything.”
