5 times that Dana White beefed with rival promoters

UFC president Dana White is naturally one of the most recognizable characters in MMA. He helped build the UFC into the juggernaut that it is today.

Part of the UFC’s success over the past two decades has come from its willingness to go to war with rival promotions. Dana White has never been a character to shy away from a confrontation with his rivals.

Over the years, we’ve seen Dana White get into multiple spats with rival promoters, whether that’s because they’ve attempted to challenge the UFC’s dominance or because they’ve hit out at the UFC in general. Some of these spats have proven to be hugely memorable, with a number of them still referred to today even if they happened a long time ago.

Here are five times that Dana White beefed with rival promoters.

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#5. Dana White vs. Oscar De La Hoya (2018)

Dana White has clashed with boxing legend Oscar De La Hoya on numerous occasions

One thing that’s guaranteed to make Dana White go ballistic is a rival promoter making derogatory comments about how much the UFC pays its fighters.

Sure, it’s a well-known fact that the UFC doesn’t provide its athletes with a similar share of revenue to other major sporting organizations like the NFL or the NBA, but the truth is that the promotion still pays better than practically all of its rivals in MMA.

However, that didn’t stop boxing legend Oscar De La Hoya from hitting out at the UFC’s payouts in 2018. De La Hoya claimed that the UFC’s pay scale made him “sick to his stomach,” and claimed that he planned to change the sport by producing events under his Golden Boy Promotions banner.

Unsurprisingly, Dana White was quick to refute the claims of the boxing legend. He did so in one of his most epic rants to date.

The UFC president labeled De La Hoya a “cokehead junkie,” referred to him as “Oscar De La Weirdo,” and slammed Golden Boy Promotions for criticizing the UFC’s pay scale while also reportedly paying undercard fighters just $2k for their efforts.

Three years later, it seems like this beef is far from done. As recently as October, De La Hoya reportedly hit out at the UFC for supposedly underpaying current featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski, only for Dana White to respond by labeling him a “liar, drug addict and all around scumbag.”

#4. Dana White vs. Gary Shaw and Elite XC (2008)

Kimbo Slice's fight with Seth Petruzelli made Dana White lose his head with Elite XC

In the mid-2000’s, when MMA reached its first “boom period” in the US, Dana White's UFC quickly established itself as the sport’s biggest promotion. However, a number of rivals quickly sprung up during the same period, looking to cut themselves a slice of the pie.

One such rival was Elite XC. The brainchild of boxing promoter Gary Shaw, Elite XC spent a ton of money buying up smaller promotions such as Cage Rage and King of the Cage and was quickly able to sign a deal with the Showtime network to broadcast their events.

2007 saw the promotion attempt to ruffle the UFC’s feathers by looking to poach then-UFC heavyweight title contender Brandon Vera. However, for the most part, Dana White stayed largely quiet on the promotion’s attempts to muscle into the market.

That was until 2008, when Elite XC managed to sign a deal to broadcast shows on the CBS network, becoming the first MMA promotion to make its way to network television in the US.

Dana White labeled their first show on the network, headlined by former YouTube street brawling sensation Kimbo Slice, “horrendous,” and stated that “MMA didn’t put its best foot forward” with the event.

Worse was to come, though. Late 2008 saw Elite XC broadcast an event entitled ‘Heat’ on CBS, and in the headliner, UFC washout Seth Petruzelli pulled off a major shock by knocking Slice out in the opening seconds.

When Petruzelli then declared to a local radio show that Elite XC had apparently offered him extra money to stand with Slice, essentially avoiding exposing his ground game, all hell broke loose.

Dana White in particular went on an epic rant, slating Slice, Elite XC and Gary Shaw and claiming the whole situation disgusted him.

The rant instantly went viral, with White’s quip of “that’s f*cking illegal!” being particularly meme-worthy. The result was an investigation into Elite XC’s affairs and months later, the promotion was dead in the water.

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#3. Dana White vs. Bob Arum (2020)

Boxing promoter Bob Arum has been at loggerheads with Dana White for years

Dana White’s feud with legendary boxing promoter Bob Arum is well-documented. Largely stemming from comments that Arum has made over the years about the legitimacy of MMA as a sport, this rivalry dates back well over a decade.

Back in 2011, for instance, Arum labeled the UFC a “monopoly,” resulting in Dana White lashing out in a rant, essentially claiming that the boxing promoter “didn’t have the balls to get into MMA” when the sport was in its infancy. Arum unsurprisingly retorted by hitting the UFC with the usual insults about their pay scale, claiming that the promotion paid its athletes “nothing.”

The two promoters have been sniping at one another in the media ever since, but the beef took on a new life in 2020 after Arum criticized Terence Crawford, a boxer fighting under his Top Rank banner.

Dana White quickly hit out at his rival for this, labeling him, amongst other things, a “f*cking scumbag” and basically claiming the media would’ve murdered him if he’d spoken about one of his fighters in a similar manner.

The feud has since simmered down, but it’s clear that it’ll probably never be completely over.

#2. Dana White vs. Tom Atencio and Affliction MMA (2009)

Tom Atencio (centre) drew the ire of Dana White when he attempted to promote Affliction MMA

Back in 2008, a number of rival promotions attempted to muscle in on the UFC’s territory. Naturally, Dana White had derogatory things to say about all of them.

He famously slammed the IFL’s “team” format, labeled Scott Coker’s StrikeForce promotion as “StrikeFarce,” and essentially helped to bury Elite XC with his rants against their use of Kimbo Slice. However, the one promotion that arguably threatened the UFC’s market share the most was Affliction MMA.

Originally an MMA clothing company, Affliction decided to get into the promotional game in 2008. When they did so, they went all-in. They inked stars like Fedor Emelianenko, Josh Barnett and Matt Lindland to deals. They even tried to poach Randy Couture and Georges St-Pierre from the UFC, although they failed and only took Tim Sylvia and Andrei Arlovski.

Still, it was enough to earn the ire of the UFC, who programmed a stacked Fight Night directly against Affliction’s first pay-per-view in July 2008.

The ire of Dana White, though, was reserved for Affliction’s head honcho Tom Atencio. An amateur fighter himself, Atencio decided to train for a clash on a smaller card while also promoting Affliction’s third event, something that didn’t sit right with White.

He stated that when the UFC was $44m in the hole, “the last thing I was doing was leaving the office to train for a joke of a fight.” He also claimed that he wouldn’t waste a single second of his time worrying about what Atencio and Affliction were doing.

Atencio did hit back, claiming White would never take a fight himself, only for the UFC president to retort by saying “why would I fight this goof? He’s neither a fighter nor a promoter, he’s a f*cking loser.”

Sure enough, it would be Dana White who had the last laugh here, as Affliction’s money eventually ran out, forcing them to stop promoting later in 2009.

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#1. Dana White vs. Jake Paul (2021)

Jake Paul has continually attempted to anger Dana White in the past few months

With a couple of exceptions, namely Fedor Emelianenko and Cris Cyborg, Dana White doesn’t tend to fire much criticism at fighters competing for rival promotions. Of course, this makes sense given he could end up promoting them in the future.

The exception to this rule seems to be YouTuber-come-boxer-come-promoter Jake Paul. The social media star has done nothing but clash with Dana White since he burst onto the combat sports scene in 2020. It doesn’t look like that’ll change any time soon.

Paul has drawn the ire of White for a number of reasons, but at the top of the list must be the fact that he has continually hit out at the UFC’s pay scale. Whether or not ‘The Problem Child’ really cares exactly how much money the UFC’s stars are making is another question entirely, but it’s clear that his jabs have gotten under the skin of the UFC president.

Dana White has lashed out at Paul on numerous occasions, criticizing him for fighting aging former UFC fighters and fellow social media stars rather than “real” boxers. He even claimed that current UFC featherweight champion Amanda Nunes could knock Paul out.

And when ‘The Problem Child’ threatened to knock out the UFC president should they ever meet in Las Vegas, White’s response was a simple one. He told Paul to “get in line.”

While the furore around Paul in the world of MMA now seems to be quieting somewhat thanks to his upcoming fight being with a boxer (Tommy Fury) rather than a former UFC star, it seems like this feud is one that will continue for some time.

As recently as last month, for instance, Paul was seen attempting to troll Dana White by dressing up as him for a Halloween costume party, complete with an array of “hookers.”