Dana White fires back at De La Hoya: ‘God help anybody who wants to go fight for Golden Boy’

Oscar De La Hoya, who recently made his move into mixed martial arts with a poorly-received pay-per-view event, was on ESPN this week and bashed UFC and Dana White’s business practices in particular.

If you know anything about Dana White, that wasn’t going to stand for long, and it hasn’t. White spoke with Yahoo! Sports and fired back at De La Hoya.

One thing in particular De La Hoya said on First Take was, “Did you know that Chuck Liddell made $200,000 when he fought Tito Ortiz [with UFC], and that PPV did 1.5 million homes? Who kept the rest of the money?! That’s not fair. You don’t do that to fighters.”

White said this in reply:

“UFC 47 was on April 2, 2004, and that was the first time Chuck and Tito fought. That pay-per-view did 106,000 buys. At UFC 66, on Dec. 30, 2006, when they fought for the second time, it did 929,000 buys. When Chuck fought the second time, he made $2.882 million and Tito made $2.081 million. Those are the facts, so Oscar is lying again.”

White added:

“(De La Hoya) knows nothing about this sport. He doesn’t know the fucking guys’ names who are fighting on his card. He’s a liar. He’s a phony and God help anybody who wants to go fight for Golden Boy. These fighters are grown men and women. All they have to do is take one meeting with Oscar De La Hoya and they’ll see what he knows about MMA, which is absolutely fucking nothing.”

My gut has always told me, and this is just my personal opinion, let’s make that clear, that De La Hoya and Golden Boy are getting involved with something they’re not prepared for with MMA. I understand the idea that fights are fights, but De La Hoya has no credibility in MMA and frankly that was all very clear during the Liddell-Ortiz promotion he and his company just put on.

As far as this war of words, I don’t know — it’s what it is, and expected from both sides. I don’t think Oscar can win this battle, either, honestly.