Dana White Throws Verbal Jabs at Oscar De La Hoya

[Vladimir303]

There is a massive gap between boxers starting out and top stars. There are boxers making a few hundred per fight out there and contenders making 5 grand a fight if they are lucky.

And HBO and Showtime control if a fighter lives or dies. If a fighter cant get on HBO or Showtime, his career is dead. Fighters are then forced to take certain chances they may not be ready for to satisfy the cable network or they end up getting blackballed.

Yes but they're still largely independent. Depending on what kind of a fighter you are.

If you're a world class level fighter (i.e. a title holder) you take your world title elsewhere and defend it. Being a world champion in the UFC means you're their champion, they own you. The WBA, IBF, WBC have nowhere near that control over their fighters.

If you were in Margarito's shoes and you can't get a fight on HBO, Top rank does a independent PPV and you fight on it. You go to ESPN and have a few fights and you're right back in action.

A UFC fighter doesn't have that kind of freedom if he is stuck on a contract and isn't satisfied with his situation.

All in all, to some it might sound good to be part of a organization like UFC and have guaranteed fights as opposed to looking for fights like a boxer does sometimes. But if you're a world class fighter and you think you're more worth then what the UFC is giving you, then it sucks.

A boxer can easly get himself out of that situation.

[Speecha]

He has a good point and everythin he is sayin is 100% true u cant even argue...i'm a fan of ufc but a bigger fan of boxin....i watched the whole card for the de la hoya pacman fight, promoted by the 2 biggest promotional companies in boxing, but the undercard ******.....ufc 92..had 3 matches all potentially worthy of the main event..if rampage vs silva was da main event on a whole different night it wud still get ordered...i think promotional companies and boxers themselves arent willin to be on major fight undercards...top rank have cotto and pavlik on the same bill soon so thts a start but i think we need 2 see more stars on the same bill...the money you have 2 pay for a ppv has 2 b justified by the bill....with ufc the stars are told who they are gonna fight and usually dont object, i think promotional companies shud put together bills wit more thn one star on it...i think that wud help wit ppv sales and with stars not shining as much as they shud....for instance i think paul williams wud b a bigger star if he werent they main event...if he for instance fought on the undercard of the pacquiauo dlh fight i think he wudda got more exposure thn him being the main event fightin verno phillips (jus an example)....danny jacobs gets mad exposure because he aint never thought on a card tht aint been huge...he benefits from being on the card of a huge main event. I kno he is a new boxer but you can see how he has benefited. Golden boy and top rank have enough stars to create a huge bill..but i also think some stars dont like 2 share spotlight and have bigger ego's thn they make out

[sportsplato]

Floyd said the same thing about Oscar before their fight.

[FaustoGeraci]

Exactly: Top fighters, the 1% I left out. Not even necessarily meaning the best, but the most marketable. And if he's lucky he can tie them up in non-negotiable long-term contracts (like Rich Franklin) before they become champion so as to continue to pay them peanuts. The gap between the rank and file and the top stars (of which there are only a handful receiving top pay) is massive. There really is almost no middle ground, though lately several of the top fighters coming over from Pride managed to negotiate well before starting to fight in the organization.

Additionally the UFC can end a fighter's contract at any time on a whim for doing anything they dislike (see Lindland the t-shirt incident). At least when a name boxer loses he isn't at a huge risk of never being allowed to fight on a serious stage ever again. The monopolistic tendencies of the UFC are neither good for the fighters nor MMA in general.

The man in your av is the best mma fighter of all time. The Sugar Ray Robinson of mma. He has never fought in the UFC and never will. Dana may be right about this, but he's the mma Vince McMahon. He plays favorites, only pushes certain guys, and has the most restricted, pathetic contracts in the entire combat sports world. He should look in the mirror.

[Low Blow Armo]

Alot. The fight against De La Hoya will go down as the biggest fraud job in the history of boxing. Hopkins' fights against Tarver and Wright all made him over 10 mil each, and what did boxing get out of it? Or the fans? Nothing but lost fans, and more garbage fights like Oscar vs Paquiao, and Hopkins vs Calzaghe.

[FaustoGeraci]

Alot. The fight against De La Hoya will go down as the biggest fraud job in the history of boxing. Hopkins' fights against Tarver and Wright all made him over 10 mil each, and what did boxing get out of it? Or the fans? Nothing but lost fans, and more garbage fights like Oscar vs Paquiao, and Hopkins vs Calzaghe.

Exactly. Guys like Paul Williams and Chad Dawson should be cash cows and the stars of the sport. Meanwhile we are stuck with the same bull**** fights like RJJ vs Trinidad etc.

[MOREBASS]

Alot. The fight against De La Hoya will go down as the biggest fraud job in the history of boxing. Hopkins' fights against Tarver and Wright all made him over 10 mil each, and what did boxing get out of it? Or the fans? Nothing but lost fans, and more garbage fights like Oscar vs Paquiao, and Hopkins vs Calzaghe.

Exactly. Guys like Paul Williams and Chad Dawson should be cash cows and the stars of the sport. Meanwhile we are stuck with the same bull**** fights like RJJ vs Trinidad etc.

Agreed. But with boxing promoters seeing the relative success that MMA has had, they are forced to reconcile, and should see that they can no longer afford to put these ****ty fights and cards together.

The UFC in 2008 is most likely (if the UFC 92 card pulled in more than 514,000) going to break the record for most PPV revenue produced by any sport in history. Boxing could take a page from what they are doing right, and that is putting great fights together consistently. Pitting the best against the best.

This is why I say that the rise of MMA is great for boxing, and its fans.

[Heru]

Compared to boxing, most definitely !

But until another promotional company has some success, the UFC can pay their fighters what they feel is fair. Then again, the UFC also has bonuses and perks that we don't often get to see publicly.

But I think one thing thats hurt boxing is the ridiculous amount of money main card fighters recieve. Its the reason why boxing will hardly ever have a full card of quality fights.

I agree, there are many more factors to the decline of boxing in the eye of the casual fan, but I also agree that if Oscar and Floyd or Oscar and Pacquiao or Jones and Calslappy gave up a small portion of their purse they would have had way better undercards and created much more interest in boxing among the casual fans.

If Oscar and Pacquiao would have given up 1-2 mil more for the undercard, it wouldn't have been Jacobs-nobody or Lopez-Medina or Ortiz-Resto, it would have been Jacobs-Up coming prospect, Lopez-Gonzalez or Penalosa, and Ortiz-Peterson or Witter.

Dana White is only partly correct in his assessment of the problems within boxing. What I am saying is that to blame Del la Hoya alone is ridiculous. The reason being is that you have so many different alphabet boys dictating who can fight who and when. In reality Oscar has little to no control over these boxing organizations that control boxing.

Also, there is no comparing boxing to the UFC because the UFC is the big dog in that show. With boxing you have many old established big dogs such as Bob Arum and Don King to Main Events and the new one on the block Golden Boy himself and that is just a hand full of them. So, obviously it would be much easier to stack the under card for White because he controls just about every facet of the UFC. And because White controls everything there is one other impotent aspect to look at. And that is what does White pay his fighters? And the answer is, not much.

When Lesnar beat Randy Couture both of them made basically chump change in taking home $250,000 a piece. I may be mistaken but I think Oscar made triple that just walking to the limo that took him to the venue when he fought Mayweather. I mean even Ricky Hatton made $2.5 million to fight the Magic Man and all White can manage to pay his his fighters in a heavyweight championship fight is a measly $250,000? Even Marciano made more then that in his heavyweight title fights more then fifty years ago. To me it is a matter of simple economics. Because it is much easier to put together stacked shows when your making millions and your only paying your fighters pennies. And the question is, what do you think will happen to White's stacked UFC under cards when his fighters demand to be paid a living wage?

I will tell you what will happen to them, they will go the way of the dinosaur because he will not pay out all the money that will be needed to maintain them. And sooner or later the UFC will have viable competition so the fighters will have options to negotiate with other organizations such as the WEC. When that happens, and it will happen, the UFC will develop growing pains and experience some of the same problems now seen in boxing.

By the way I like to watch the UFC but it just doesn't compare to a great old fashion slug fest of a boxing match and the UFC will certainly never ever have the rich history that boxing enjoys, it will just never happen. Enough of my rants and have a safe and happy new years!!

And promoters interacting and bargaining with those networks creates a degree of parity, something which doesn't exist in the UFC since they are one and the same entity.

You may need to acquaint yourself with several of the ridiculous reasons for which fighters have been cut in the past. In regards to salary, you missed my point entirely. In boxing there are plenty of "middle ground" champions, not stars but not unknown who pull in six-figure fight purposes of varying degrees. This type of fighters basically does not exist in the UFC. Many fan favorites can scarcely pay for their camps with their fight purses. Simple fact: virtually all UFC fighters make far and away the bulk of their livelihood from sponsors, and all such sponsors have to be personally approved by the UFC (leading to the extreme repetition and lack of variety). No UFC, no sponsors, no earning a living through fighting. The UFC holds all the cards regardless of how one performs in the ring, and dominate salary negotiations even for the marquee names. Only Couture and Liddell (perhaps Lesnar now) ever managed to partially break this pattern, and even Couture sparked a huge lawsuit with the organization largely weak fight purse conditions in his contract in proportion to his drawing power.

This is one of the reasons why top talent flocked to Pride FC, the fight purses were always proportionate to a fighter's status.

Good post, UFC's monopoly goes a long way to the good setup of that sport and the abusiveness of their fighters. I don't like White and the UFShe, but he has a point, guys like Oscar don't give a ****t about boxing and its future.

[DrewWoodside]

**** Dana White. I didnt even read the article. Whether or not he is right or wrong, **** him anyway, always ****ting on boxing.

Yup, He has an agenda that generally undermines every fan on this site. Lets not pretend he's making these statements for the good of boxing. He's a selfish prick.

[southpaw_07]

UFC fights usually have a KO bonus in the fight contract, around 10-15 % depending on the level. They are not that underpaid...