Oscar De La Hoya used a Monday appearance on The Ariel Helwani Show to go after Zuffa Boxing on several fronts, accusing the promotion of deliberately keeping him off the stage at the Ryan Garcia vs. Conor Benn press conference, warning fighters about the contracts they are signing, and declaring that his line to Turki Alalshikh has gone dead.
“There’s zero communication,” De La Hoya said of Alalshikh. “The bottom line is that Turki picked Dana White to run boxing in the US, that’s his guy.”
The Golden Boy Promotions founder was noticeably absent from the July 18 press conference in New York, where White stood between Garcia and Benn as the two were pulled apart on stage. De La Hoya, who has promoted Garcia for the fighter’s entire professional career, told Helwani the omission was intentional.
“How f***ing petty are these guys, not to include me and make sure I’m not on stage? Are they afraid that I’m gonna sock Dana in the nose?” De La Hoya said. “Of course, I’m gonna be there. Of course, I’m gonna be promoting it. Everybody knows Ryan Garcia is my fighter. I really do believe they are trying to keep me away from Dana because they know what’s gonna happen.”
Asked about sharing a stage with White during fight week in Las Vegas, De La Hoya did not hesitate. “Front and center, I will be there. I cannot wait,” he said.
Garcia defends his WBC welterweight title against Benn on September 12 at T-Mobile Arena, a co-promotion between Golden Boy and Zuffa Boxing that became official earlier this month after two months of contentious negotiations. The buildup has been complicated on the Golden Boy side as well. De La Hoya said on Instagram earlier in July that fans were not asking for the Benn fight and that he would have preferred a Devin Haney rematch, comments that drew a public response from Garcia on last week’s Helwani show. “I just want a structured team that’s behind me,” Garcia said, per Uncrowned.
De La Hoya also aimed at Zuffa’s recruiting push, which has brought close to 100 fighters under contract, most recently four-division champion Shakur Stevenson in a signing the promotion rolled out across ESPN and Ring Magazine.
“[Zuffa Boxing] is offering these guys a lot of money, but long term, they’re going to change the contracts. They’re going to lure you in just like the Trojan horse, and they’re going to f*** you. That’s the bottom line,” De La Hoya said. “That’s exactly what happened with Shakur Stevenson.”
He extended the critique to White himself and to the corporate structure behind the promotion, which operates under publicly traded TKO Group Holdings in partnership with Saudi Arabia’s Sela.
“[Dana White] has no clue what he’s doing. He has no clue which fighters are under Zuffa. Every fighter is a number to this organization because, when you’re under a publicly traded company, it’s all about the bottom line. That’s exactly what I can see in the future,” De La Hoya said. “These guys are just using all these fighters for their benefit. That’s corporate America.”
The comments about Alalshikh carry their own history. Golden Boy staged events under the Riyadh Season banner as recently as May 2025, when Garcia headlined in Times Square, before the promoter aligned with Top Rank, Matchroom and Queensberry in a new round of multi-year DAZN deals as Zuffa’s rivals consolidated on the platform. In his previous appearance on Helwani’s show in March, De La Hoya criticized the TKO-backed Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revival Act and said he regretted selling Ring Magazine to Alalshikh.
