Ryan Garcia vs. Conor Benn, announced Wednesday for September 12 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, accomplished something two decades of combat sports history suggested was impossible: it put Dana White and Oscar De La Hoya on the same poster. Garcia is a Golden Boy Promotions fighter. Benn is signed to White’s Zuffa Boxing. The fight could not happen without both companies, and it is now official, with the card streaming globally on Paramount+.
Golden Boy confirmed its involvement with its own announcement on X, and the official artwork carries the Golden Boy and Zuffa Boxing logos side by side. Turki Alalshikh, the Zuffa Boxing co-founder who announced the fight, brokered the arrangement between two companies that were exchanging legal letters a month ago.
A Rivalry That Goes Back Years
White and De La Hoya have traded barbs for the better part of two decades, across interviews, press conferences and social media. The rivalry became direct competition in 2018, when Golden Boy promoted its first and only MMA event, a trilogy fight between former UFC champions Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz. White criticized the event sharply, referring to his rival as “Oscar De La Weirdo,” and later told Yahoo Sports that De La Hoya was “a liar” and “a phony.” De La Hoya has kept White as a regular target of his “Clapback Thursday” social media posts ever since, and as recently as May was describing his future business partner as a “neanderthal.”
None of it stopped this fight. The full De La Hoya quote from that May interview tells the whole story of how boxing works: “Dana White is a neanderthal, but I’ll still work with him.” White, asked about a possible Garcia matchup that same month, told Sky Sports, “Obviously, I am about making the biggest fights you can possibly make.” De La Hoya repeated the point in June: “We work with every promoter, even if it has to be Dana White.” Both men kept their word.
The Co-Promotion That Never Happened in MMA
What makes the arrangement notable is that the UFC under White never co-promoted with rival organizations. The most famous cost of that policy was Fedor Emelianenko, the Russian heavyweight widely regarded as the best in the world in the late 2000s. Negotiations to bring him to the UFC collapsed repeatedly because his management company, M-1 Global, demanded co-promotion. White said at the time he was willing to make a deal “at almost any cost,” with the almost being co-promotion. Fights between Emelianenko and UFC champions Randy Couture and Brock Lesnar, the biggest matchups available in the sport during that era, never happened.
Boxing produced a different outcome. When Zuffa Boxing signed Benn to a multi-fight deal this year and Garcia won the WBC welterweight title in February, the biggest available welterweight fight sat split between two camps. Getting it done took weeks of negotiation, including a legal dispute in June over promotional and broadcast rights that was resolved with Paramount+ carrying the card globally and DAZN holding exclusive rights in the UK and Ireland. This time, the deal got made. Fans get the fight Emelianenko-era MMA never delivered: the two best available opponents, held by rival promoters, in the same ring.
What Comes Next
A press tour featuring White and De La Hoya on the same stage will be a first, and De La Hoya has predicted the news conferences will be an attraction in their own right, telling Sports Illustrated they might be more interesting than the fight. The fighters bring their own edge; Garcia has called the matchup personal, citing a confrontation with Benn at an awards show. For eight weeks, the two loudest promoters in combat sports are selling the same ticket, and boxing is the reason they finally can.
