Dana White Not Interested In Reconciling With De La Hoya: 'That Guy Did Way Too Much Damage'

Dana White may have let bygones be bygones with Oscar De La Hoya, but don’t expect the combat sports executives to go shopping for nine irons anytime soon.

In an episode of Actually Me, a video series published by GQ, White, the president of the UFC, answered a slew of questions from fans on social media.

One of them concerned the topic of Golden Boy Promotions founder Oscar De La Hoya.

“‘De La Hoya wants to sit down with Dana White to bury the hatchet,’” White said, reading an old BoxingScene.com headline. “I feel like De La Hoya’s apology was sincere, but there’s no way he and I could ever be friends.

“He and I were actually friends. I used to go to his fights, I used to watch his fights, I used to promote his fights––that guy did way too much damage for us to be friends again. I appreciate his apology, I get it, we’re cool, but we’re never going to be that cool.”

The two were on good terms for many years before their relationship abruptly went south. The schism is thought to have started in 2017, when De La Hoya actively encouraged consumers to refrain from buying the pay-per-view match between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Conor McGregor, who at the time was White’s star fighter.

Matters turned worse in 2018, when De La Hoya attempted to schedule a fight card on the same day as a UFC card.

De La Hoya also challenged White to a fight a few times. On one occasion, he called White a “little b!itch.” White, in turn, has denigrated De La Hoya by calling him a “scumbag” and “drug addict.”

Earlier this year, De La Hoya revealed that he had extended an olive branch to White, telling The MMA Hour that he had personally delivered an apology to White and that, furthermore, he wanted to collaborate with the UFC head honcho on future fights.

“Dana criticized me and all that, for a good reason, it’s for a good reason,” De La Hoya said. “There were some exchanges going back and forth, me and Dana, which I apologized to him a 1,000 percent. I think that there’s still a lot of business to be done between me and Dana in the future.”