UFC President Dana White is moving forward with his plan to get involved in the sport of boxing in 2018.
White has already scheduled a few big meetings where he plans to sit down with different key figures in the sport of boxing. Two of the key figures that White has no interest in meeting with - are Top Rank's CEO Bob Arum and Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya.
"No Arum and no De La Coo-Coo. Hell no, I don’t need them. Can’t work with them. De La Hoya hates Arum and Arum hates De La Hoya. They’re exactly alike. Both of those guys are carbon copies of each other," White said.
White has traded words with Arum for several years.
But White's rivalry with De La Hoya began when UFC superstar Conor McGregor finalized a deal to fight Floyd Mayweather only three weeks apart from Golden Boy's signature pay-per-view of the year, Canelo Alvarez vs. Gennady Golovkin.
De La Hoya was furious over Mayweather-McGregor being booked only three weeks before his event - and at the same venue, T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
But then strangely, two weeks ago De La Hoya himself called for a fight with McGregor.
“I used to like Oscar,” White said. “How about that Conor McGregor vs. Mayweather was the biggest disgrace ever to the sport of boxing, but him vs. Conor isn’t?”
The Zuffa Boxing brand - like the UFC - will be run under parent company WME-IMG.
“Right now, I have two different plans,” said White. “I have a Plan A and a Plan B. And I’m not sure which I’m gonna go with. But I’m gonna sit down, I’m gonna talk to everybody in the industry. They all want to come out here, they all want to talk. Fighters want to come out here and talk. So many people. So I’m gonna take like a month at the beginning of the year and just focus on this thing and see what we’re gonna do.”
“I think that right now is the right time. I just feel it. I feel like it’s the right time. Listen, can I do it? I don’t know. Will it work? I don’t know. But I feel like I have a pretty good idea of how to make it work. And I’ll give it a shot.”
