Eddie Hearn has not held back on his thoughts about Dana White’s first boxing event, which took place Friday night in Las Vegas.
White’s Zuffa Boxing made its debut at the Meta Apex. While it did not attract much mainstream attention, the project does have significant backing from Turki Alalshikh and support from TKO Group, which also includes WWE.
The venue, familiar to MMA fans, welcomed a few hundred spectators for the main event between Ireland’s Callum Walsh and Carlos Ocampo. The fight itself did not deliver much excitement and lacked any memorable moments or knockouts.
Eddie Hearn questions Dana White’s boxing credentials
Since White entered the boxing world with Canelo Alvarez vs. Terence Crawford in September, there has been some friction between him and Hearn.
The pair have exchanged words through the media, though nothing has crossed the line enough to disrupt their longstanding relationship.
Speaking on The Ariel Helwani Show, Hearn suggested that White’s knowledge of boxing is limited, especially compared to his expertise in MMA. It is a point fans have raised before, and one Hearn did not shy away from addressing.
“We’re going war, it’s that simple, but that’s okay. They might not think I’m a threat, and I might think I’m much better than them, it doesn’t really matter, but it doesn’t have to,” he began by saying.
“We’re going to be talking, and we may do some stuff together, or we may just keep fighting for how long it lasts. But when I see him talk about boxing – and I don’t mean this disrespectfully – he doesn’t really know a great deal about the fighters or the sport as it is.
“But I see a guy that’s 100 per cent invested in UFC and not really that invested in boxing, if I’m honest. Because when he’s doing when he’s sitting in the war room or whatever he is, and he’s like ‘What’s up, guys?’ I’m engaged.
“But when you’re at a press conference and you’ve got some notes here and it’s, like, ‘we’ve got a 10 round fight, um, this guy…’ I’m thinking ‘I’m not interested’…
“Sales is a transfer of emotion. Right? So when I’m selling to you, that emotion is what’s going to make you buy it or become invested in what I’m selling. And if you’re not, if you don’t have that emotion, and that fire in your heart, it’s just not the same.
“That’s probably what you see. Listen, it might be the same for me if I went into MMA and I was talking about, you know ‘we’ve got a guy on the undercard here’. I don’t know enough about it. I can’t give you the ins and outs of the industry and what’s been happening for the last 15 years.
“I know every ranking system, every fighter in the rankings, all the records, I’m an encyclopedia. Just like he could probably sit up and talk about a UFC fighter, could he go through their career and all that kind of stuff?
“I think it’s a little bit unfair, just to say he doesn’t look like he’s bothered or has that passion for it. I just don’t think it means as much to him as his baby, which is the UFC.”
Inside the cancelled catch-up between Eddie Hearn and Dana White
Even with the tension between them, White and Hearn nearly crossed paths last week. Both were promoting events in Las Vegas, with the 46-year-old staging a card at the Fontainebleau the same night as UFC 324.
Weather issues made travel difficult, leaving Hearn with limited options to get to New York ahead of this weekend’s fight between Teofimo Lopez and Shakur Stevenson at Madison Square Garden. The only available flight time did not line up with when White was free.
Hearn revealed: “I messaged Dana to meet him, I think he messaged to meet yesterday. 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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