Dana White has revealed that he experienced the type of treatment Oscar De La Hoya recently accused him of for the Ryan Garcia-Conor Benn fight, recalling how Vince McMahon allegedly left him scrambling for tickets before Ronda Rousey’s WWE in-ring debut.
Speaking on Tuesday after Week 9 of Dana White’s Contender Series, a UFC auditioning platform for MMA prospects, White rejected De La Hoya’s accusation that he and Zuffa Boxing intended to embarrass the Golden Boy Promotions founder at the Garcia-Benn event.
White acknowledged that his dislike for De La Hoya is well known but insisted he would never deliberately invite an enemy to an event only to humiliate them once they arrived.
Instead, White pointed to an experience he said he had in New Orleans in 2018. According to the UFC CEO, McMahon did essentially what De La Hoya feared would happen to him during Ronda Rousey’s WWE debut, leaving White without his expected tickets and ultimately putting him in the bleachers.
“It happened to me,” White said. “Vince McMahon did it to me for Ronda’s first wrestling match.” White recalled traveling to New Orleans specifically to watch Rousey compete in her first WWE match at WrestleMania 34.
When he arrived at the venue and went to will call, however, he said he was informed that no tickets were waiting for him. “I started making some phone calls; they ended up getting me tickets, I’m in the f—ing bleachers,” White said. “I’ve been through all that.”
White’s story provides a surprising connection to his current dispute with De La Hoya. It also offered White an opportunity to explain why, despite his longstanding hostility toward De La Hoya, he believes there is a line that should not be crossed in business.
White brought up the story while responding to De La Hoya’s explanation for missing Garcia vs. Benn. De La Hoya told Fight Hub TV that he believed he was going to be set up and embarrassed at the event.
“I was not going to show up and be embarrassed, because that’s exactly what they were going to do to me. I was not going to do that. So, I made the wise decision to not go,” De La Hoya stated. “It would have been embarrassing. It would have created distractions. It would have been a mess.”
White said that even though the animosity between the two promoters is mutual, he would rather tell someone outright that they are unwelcome than allow them to travel to an event only to be embarrassed at the door.
“My dislike for Oscar De La Hoya is very well known,” White said. “He knows it, I know it, and it’s mutual. I am the type of person who would call and say, ‘Don’t even try to show up to this fight. You’re not welcome,’ and I would never have somebody show up to an event and do that,” he claimed.
He said De La Hoya knew he had tickets and knew where he was supposed to sit, making the situation fundamentally different from White’s account of arriving in New Orleans without tickets. “Oscar knew he had tickets,” White said. “Oscar knew where he was sitting. Oscar was coming in the back like all the celebrities do to the celebrity VIP area, and he knew all of that.”
For White, the experience with McMahon gave him a personal example of the kind of treatment he says he would never intentionally do to any of his personal enemies.
White’s foray into Zuffa Boxing is proving to rub promoters the wrong way, and while neither White nor De La Hoya appears interested in burying the hatchet, White is adamant that he would never stoop to such an immature level of sabotage.
This story was originally published by Athlon Sports on Oct 8, 2026, where it first appeared in the Wrestling section.
