Oscar De La Hoya’s MMA promotion only ever put on one show, and he places the blame for that squarely at UFC president Dana White’s feet. De La Hoya told the story of Golden Boy MMA’s sole excursion on The MMA Hour.
“I did that one show. It was such a great experience. Obviously, it’s not my sport that I know, that I’m knowledgable about, [but] it’s still the fight game. It’s still the same promotion. It’s still — you have fighter, you have the venues, you have pay-per-views, it’s all the same.
De La Hoya Blames Dana White For Golden Boy MMA Failure
The business model is all the same. We had the arena jam-packed; pay-per-views didn’t do too well for certain reasons, certain cable operators weren’t working with us, but I think it’s just because I received too much heat from Dana White.
That’s literally the bottom line. And also being busy with Golden Boy Promotions, I decided I’m going to stay in my own lane.
I did it because fighters came to me and said, ‘Hey, why don’t you help us out here? We want to try something new here. We want to try to build something here with you.’ So I tried it, and it was a great experience.
I actually really loved it, the atmosphere and the fans, it’s really engaging. It was a lot of fun, but the bottom line is, I received a lot of heat for not really knowing the insights of MMA and everything that goes on, all the players and the fighters. Dana criticized me and all that, and it’s for a good reason.
There were some exchanges going back and forth with me and Dana, which I apologized for, 1000 percent.”
The event, back in 2018, was headlined by a rematch between Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz. This was enough to irritate Dana White, who has been publicly feuding with De La Hoya ever since. There are no hard feelings on Oscar De La Hoya’s part, however.
“I would love to work with him,” De La Hoya said of White. “It would be a lot of fun and interesting to build something together, because boxing is a very fragmented sport, and what the Fertitta brothers did and what Dana did with the UFC is incredible. Buying the company many years ago, building it into a powerhouse, building it into a league, building it into what it is now is just so admirable.
So yeah, I’m extending an olive branch. I would love to sit down and talk and smooth things out, let bygones be bygones, and then focus on business.”
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