Dana White was not entirely sure what Eddie Hearn hoped to accomplish with their proposed sit-down last week.
It was a huge weekend for White, who rolled out two new major broadcast deals for Paramount in Las Vegas. He kicked things off with Zuffa Boxing at the Meta Apex on Friday, followed by a sold-out UFC 324 at the T-Mobile Arena.
In the midst of all that, Hearn reached out to suggest a face-to-face, as he was in town hosting his own event at Fontainebleau. The pair could not align their schedules, which did not seem to bother the UFC boss.
Dana White unclear about Eddie Hearn’s intentions
Ever since White went public with his plans for Zuffa Boxing, which includes backing from Turki Alalshikh, his relationship with Hearn has cooled. The two promoters used to be on good terms, but there has been more tension lately, and they have not been shy about taking jabs at each other through the media.
Hearn tried to ease tensions by proposing a meeting for the duo while they were both in Las Vegas. The Matchroom Boxing boss stated that such meetings were a regular occurrence whenever he was in Nevada, but this time, travel complications prevented the planned get-together.
After the Zuffa Boxing event that night, White spoke about how odd it was that Hearn wanted to meet up.
The 56-year-old businessman said: “It was kind of weird… He wanted to meet up on Sunday and we did not.
“Yeah, I’ll meet up with him, but I agree with what you said [the reporter had mentioned his series of interviews that were not complimentary], the guy’s been doing all these nutty interviews and then he wanted to get together and talk about I don’t know what.”
Eddie Hearn tells Ariel Helwani about missed Dana White meeting
Hearn recently appeared on Ariel Helwani’s show, where he explained that travel issues caused by severe weather prevented his meeting with White.
He said: “I messaged Dana to meet him, I think he messaged to meet yesterday,” Hearn explained. “But I had a flight, we had to get to New York, because we had a slot that we could only take off on and if we didn’t make that, who knows when we’d have got here?
“So I didn’t manage to catch up with him, but we were going to… I messaged him first on Saturday… So, we were supposed to meet yesterday, but things are good.”
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