Dana White and Eddie Hearn once considered each other friends but that relationship has changed dramatically over the past few months as the promoters have engaged in a nasty war of words and it even got to the point where they were challenging each other to a fight.<\/p>\n
While a lot of the animosity has been built around White launching Zuffa Boxing, which is a direct challenge to Hearn\u2019s Matchroom Boxing, the bad blood has even boiled over to the UFC. After Zuffa signed Conor Benn to a deal after he spent almost his entire career with Hearn, the veteran boxing promoter then became UFC heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall\u2019s agent and manager.<\/p>\n
Most recently, Hearn went as far as daring White to release Aspinall from his contract<\/a> because he alleges the terms of the deal are \u201cabsolutely disgusting\u201d and he\u2019s being paid far less than his worth. Of course there\u2019s almost zero chance White would actually release Aspinall from his contract and UFC legend Matt Brown says it\u2019s just showing that Hearn is getting too emotionally charged for a battle that he\u2019s losing.<\/p>\n \u201cI think he\u2019s overvaluing his role as a manager of a UFC fighter,\u201d Brown said about Hearn on The Fighter vs. The Writer. \u201cI don\u2019t think he really understands how this works. It\u2019s not boxing. It is a different world. I feel like Dana\u2019s not the guy you really want to have a feud with, especially Dana coming into boxing. This time right now, Dana\u2019s close friends with the president. You better have all the cards stacked in your favor if you\u2019re going to go and talk shit to Dana White. You want to start talking, having problems with Dana? You better have your f*cking ducks in a row. Clearly, he didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n \u201cI like Eddie Hearn. I\u2019m not talking shit about him. I\u2019m saying what did Dana do? He went and grabbed his top star [Conor Benn] and had him fight for [Zuffa Boxing]. Eddie\u2019s response is \u2018well, I\u2019m going to manage your guy.\u2019 You\u2019re losing there. Eddie\u2019s like \u2018we\u2019ll fight.\u2019 We\u2019re not teenagers. He\u2019s in a tough situation.\u201d<\/p>\n Brown spent the better part of 15 years with the UFC and he never had a combative relationship with White or any of the other executives but he\u2019s definitely seen plenty of people try that tactic.<\/p>\n While there are definitely examples where fighters fought out a deal and left in free agency, the idea that the grass is always greener elsewhere isn\u2019t true.<\/p>\n In Aspinall\u2019s case, he competes in a remarkably shallow division and his best option outside the UFC would be facing somebody like Francis Ngannou but then the well likely runs dry again. It\u2019s the same reason why Ngannou just recently fought Philipe Lins as an overwhelming favorite because heavyweight just doesn\u2019t have a plethora of top stars lingering around.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t get the math that he\u2019s adding up in his head,\u201d Brown said about Hearn. \u201cMaybe there\u2019s shit going on that I don\u2019t understand either but it just doesn\u2019t add up from everything we\u2019re seeing in the public and everything he\u2019s saying publicly. I don\u2019t know even what he\u2019s going to do with Tom Aspinall. What would he even expect to do with him? Put him in a boxing match? There\u2019s really one fight that people will want to see him and maybe there\u2019s two.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe they want to see him fight Rico Verhoeven now. I think that\u2019d be kind of cool personally but are they going to rebuild him as a boxing star? I think that\u2019s an uphill battle.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s unlikely Aspinall would even jump at the chance to face Verhoeven considering they are good friends and have spent ample time training together over the past few years.<\/p>\n But more than anything, Brown just isn\u2019t sure why Hearn is poking the bear by constantly jabbing at the UFC while simultaneously attempting to put Aspinall in a position to succeed when he returns to action after suffering a gruesome eye injury in his previous outing.<\/p>\n If anything, Brown feels like Hearn is allowing White to bring the worst out of him and it\u2019s not going to help matters much when it comes time for Aspinall to book his next fight.<\/p>\n \u201cThese aren\u2019t the guys you want to be messing with, especially when you ain\u2019t got all your ducks in a row,\u201d Brown said. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like Dana played the Conor [McGregor] game on him. He got Eddie\u2019s emotions riled up and now Eddie\u2019s making bad business decisions based off those emotions.<\/p>\n \u201cI think Eddie Hearn\u2019s a smart guy, I think he\u2019s a great promoter and I think he\u2019s well-spoken. He represents his guys well. I think he represents his promotion well. It seems to me in this little feud that Dana\u2019s pulling the worst out of him. I don\u2019t know Eddie personally but these things he\u2019s doing publicly and saying, it doesn\u2019t feel to me it\u2019s authentic. It feels to me like Dana\u2019s pulling emotions out of him, which tells me Dana\u2019s winning the game.\u201d<\/p>\n Brown spent enough time around White and the UFC to know how they operate and this ongoing battle is probably only going to end one way and it\u2019s highly unlikely to favor Hearn.<\/p>\n \u201cThese aren\u2019t the guys you want to f*ck with,\u201d Brown said. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to do your thing really well, all them to do their thing really well, and stay side by side. Dana\u2019s the old school gangster. He grew up in Whitey Bulger times in Boston. I just don\u2019t feel like that\u2019s the guy you want to f*ck with.<\/p>\n \u201cIf this is a fight, Dana\u2019s on the verge of some 10-8 rounds. You\u2019ve got to get a knockout now to win!\u201d<\/p>\n Listen to new episodes of The Fighter vs. The Writer every Tuesday with audio only versions of the podcast available on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a>, and iHeartRadio<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dana White and Eddie Hearn once considered each other friends but that relationship has changed dramatically over the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":721353,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,802,1920,786,1347,785,45518,1591,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-721352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-news","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-mmaf-podcast-network","tag-podcasts","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=721352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/721353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=721352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=721352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=721352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}