Eddie Hearn on Dana White’s Bid To Take Over Boxing: “Let the battle commence”
Eddie Hearn and Dana White find themselves vying for prominence in the modern Boxing landscape, with the former welcoming the challenge. This sentiment was expressed by Hearn during a recent interview on The Ariel Helwani Show.
The promoter of Matchroom Boxing has been one of the prominent figures within the sweet science for many years now, with his father also fleshing out a broader generational legacy of fight promoters. Dana White entered the Queensberry Rules space with a massive offering, in conjunction with Turki Alalshikh, with the Terence Crawford vs. Canelo Alvarez fight. The Netflix broadcasted super fight drew well over forty million viewers and represented a big entry into the boxing world for the UFC promoter.
In touching on his mindset regarding Dana White promoting in the boxing space and what that means for the future of his own enterprise, Eddie Hearn said,
“There’ll never be any disrespect – you’ll never see me slagging him off or talking down about him. I’m excited by the challenge because it’s a real challenge. He’ll believe he can dominate boxing, dominate me, dominate everything, and I feel the same. You’ve got two guys with a lot of ambition, deep pockets, and big egos. In a pleasant way, let battle commence.”
“Our relationship’s good. I’ve never had any kind of falling out with Dana. I can’t stress enough the respect I have for him. He is one of the greatest combat sport promoters of all time. But you can’t expect me, a guy who’s extremely competitive, not to want to roll up my sleeves and see who is best in boxing, because I believe I am the best in boxing.”
eddie Hearn “I want to prove that I’m much better than” Dana White
The Matchroom Boxing figurehead does not intend to engage in petty trash talk with White but does have a desire to compete. In the same Ariel Helwani interview embedded above, Eddie Hearn stated [via MMA News],
“You’re not going to see me slagging off Dana White – not because I don’t want to upset him, because I respect him. The one thing I would really like at this point in my career is to go head-to-head with him and to take him on. I want to compete against Dana White.”
“I want to prove that I’m much better than him as a boxing promoter. So, I’m excited for him to come into the space. Competition’s fantastic, but you’re not going to come into boxing and steamroll the game. It’s not going to happen. Let’s see how it plays out.”
