Another week passes, another week where UFC's President Dana White takes aim at Top Rank's CEO Bob Arum.
The two executives, both based in Las Vegas, have taken verbal shots at each other for years.
Despite both having exclusive broadcast deals with ESPN, their rivalry has continued to play out.
In a recent interview with BoxingScene.com, Arum discussed the possibility of staging the lightweight unification between Vasiliy Lomachenko and Teofimo Lopez in the month of September, in Las Vegas, with a limited amount of fans in the venue.
Earlier this month, Top Rank began their summer series of events in Las Vegas, at the MGM Grand's Conference Center, in a closed doors scenario.
“In August, we’ll continue to have all ‘Bubble’ fights, with no spectators,” Arum said. “I think starting in September, you’ll see us doing fights with spectators, small numbers of spectators. And hopefully, by the end of this year and the beginning of next year, we’ll be back to fights with full capacity [at venues].”
Those comments really irritated White.
The UFC resumed their live events, behind closed doors, in May.
According to White, Arum roasted him for even discussing the idea of moving forward with live events while the coronavirus pandemic was playing out - and now the veteran promoter is discussing the idea of putting together live events with spectators present.
“People aren't even watching [Top Rank] on TV, so fans are going to f--king show up now? So, this assh-le is saying that he’s gonna have fans at his fights, when a few weeks ago, he was talking sh-t about me for even going [forward with events]. Then I go and now he’s going right after I’m going, but he’s gonna have fans all of a sudden too?! He’s an assh-le. He has 300,000 viewers and he's going to have fans? What are 14 fans going to show up?," White told reporters in the aftermath of Saturday's UFC on ESPN 11 event from the APEX in Las Vegas.
If Arum goes forward on the planned date of September 19, it would go head to head with the UFC 253 pay-per-view event that White is planning to do, with Khabib Nurmagomedov.
