Zuffa BoxingBOURNEMOUTH, England – From Don King and Bob Arum going at it for years and Eddie Hearn and Frank Warren following suit, the hot new promoter feud is between Hearn and Zuff Boxing boss Dana White.
Following the bruising battle between Chris Billam-Smith and Ryan Rozicki in Bournemouth, White addressed some media questions about Hearn, who had a show on at the same time in Sheffield topped by Josh Padley-Aqib Fiaz.
The back-and-forth through the media has become more intense, and one significant discrepancy between the sides is who will promote the proposed fight between Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury.
Both Warren and Hearn have said White will not be involved. But the UFC boss maintains he will promote it.
“Have they announced where that fight is? No. I know where it is,” White said, when pressed by ProBoxing Fans.
“Watch what happens over the next 30 days.”
“You think that I would publicly lie and then look like a fucking idiot in front of everybody? So do you believe that? Do you believe that I would? What would be the point of that? ‘I was lying, everybody!’ ‘I got you, right?’ What would be the point of that? Call Eddie right now and ask him if he knows where the fight is. Call Eddie and ask him who negotiated the contract for the fight. It wasn’t him.”
Hearn has started managing UFC heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall, and has said he won’t let Aspinall fight under the terms of his current contract.
“Let’s see how it all happens,” White said. “I mean, if Eddie’s not going to let his fighter fight, what are you going to do? You can’t make anybody fight. You can’t force anybody to fight. You have to want to fight. So we’ll see how it plays out. Eddie, who apparently, you know, [Conor] Benn [who left Hearn’s Matchroom for Zuffa] was his best friend. Eddie’s been crying, literally crying for weeks, ‘Oh, you’re my best friend.’ He didn’t even want to pay him, but he wants to pay my guy [Aspinall]. He could have paid his best friend. They could have remained best friends… Eddie’s full of a lot of shit.”
White was then asked that, with Queensberry and Matchroom considering running back their 5x5 event, he would do something similar with either entity.
“No, not really. These guys that hated each other six months ago are all working together now. It’s me versus all of them,” he added. “So I don’t think you will see anything like that.”
Asked further about the Aspinall situation, White continued: “He said that he wanted him released [from his UFC contract], right? You release Bam Rodriguez then? Sounds pretty stupid, doesn’t it? Congratulations again, Eddie. You sound stupid again.”
White then furthered his vision for boxing, and how he plans to go about it, with dates set to be added to both his Paramount and Sky Sports deals.
“Well, what starts to happen is as we rip the sport apart and start to build from the ground up with nights like tonight, it starts to create all these different storylines and starts to line up different fights,” he explained. “And the fans and the media start to talk about what they want to see next. You know, we have a Sky deal, which is a very big deal to us. So we’ll be in the UK a lot. And already this year in the United States, we’re going to be adding more fights to Paramount. I mean, we’re five months into this thing and we’re already adding more shows on our Paramount deal and I hope the same thing happens with Sky. We’ve got a lot of big announcements coming up over the next month. So you’re going to expect lots of big things coming from us.”
White also said a lawsuit from Boxxer claiming Zuffa Boxing had taken some of their fighters was not true and that would play out publicly, but he made it clear he was not playing the sandbox with other boxing promoters.
“People always ask me about, ‘oh, you’re competing with this guy.’ Right now, at the level that we’re at, we’re competing with the NFL, we’re competing with the NBA, we’re competing with Major League Baseball and the NHL. You got to imagine, in the United States, the powerhouse over there is the NFL. And I’m sure when the NFL, when they were sitting in executive offices and they saw the deal that we got with Paramount, they had to be thinking, ‘Wait a minute, there was $8 billion sitting over at Paramount that we didn’t get.’ And then, when you go outside the United States, you start competing with soccer.
“When I think about my competition, those are the people that I’m looking at as competition these days. Over the next month, the announcements that we make over the next month and then, like I said, judge us January 1st at the end of this year, beginning of next year on how we’ve done this year.”
Asked also about when the WBC welterweight title fight between Ryan Garcia and Benn might take place, White added: “Soon. A lot of fun things coming up over the next month.”
![Conor Benn [right] celebrates his victory over Chris Eubank Jnr with Connor Mitchell in November 2025](https://photo.boxingscene.com/uploads/connor-mitchell-conor-benn.webp)
