Dana White and Eddie Hearn will never fight each other — stop giving their egos attention

“I want to do it,” Eddie Hearn told an iFL TV reporter on Friday in response to a question regarding a potential fight with rival Zuffa Boxing promoter and UFC CEO Dana White.

And the result of this direct fight acceptance from the 46-year-old who has never boxed professionally in his life to the 56-year-old who has never boxed professionally in his life? Online hysteria.

Over the weekend, it hardly took a degree in research to stumble across mock-ups of the two promoters squaring off in staged faceoffs, or AI-generated clips of them trading punches inside a ring somehow sturdy enough to carry the weight of both egos. Consider this your mercy ruling: I’ll spare you the evidence of that particular slop.

One particular account with a sizable following also claimed that Hearn and White had agreed to an August 22 bout under the Misfits Boxing banner inside Las Vegas’ Meta Apex. B.S, of course, but we’re in the business of clicks.

I get it: Page 1 of the “How To Be A Boxing Promoter Handbook” will tell you it’s all about making noise and headlines — your voice is your tool, your weapon. But we are on a slippery slope into muddied territory.

These voices should be used to sell their fighters. Tell the world how great they are. Tell the world how they beat any other fighter in their weight class on any day of the week, twice on a Sunday. Unfiltered, unapologetic bias and dripping in hyperbole.

But since White has crash-landed in the world of boxing, he’s brought with him some unhelpful baggage from the UFC that is Trumpian in its nature: Making it all about him, himself and him only.

It’s an argument that has been aired in the world of UFC for years. Fighters are viewed as cogs in the wheel of the business. They are paid poorly — in comparison — for their efforts, treated as employees in a capitalist behemoth of a company, and any endeavor to properly tell their stories is met with red tape and hesitation. Conor McGregor broke that mold for a period of time. Perhaps his rise acted as a wake-up call to tighten the bolts of the machine.

But in boxing, the story behind every single fighter is what keeps (some of) us sane in this industry. Keeps us naively coming back for more like a jilted lover, determined to prove that it’s all going to be fine.

Hearn continued his interview by doubling down on the hunger for attention. Their positions in a shared space demands rivalry, but White’s recent poaching of former Matchroom fighter Conor Benn has accelerated feelings of ill will between the camps.

Eddie Hearn (right) pictured with Ben Whittaker after the Brit's recent win over Braian Suarez.

(Gary Oakley - PA Images via Getty Images)

“If I was in the media, this would be a question that I would be asking: ‘Dana, you called out Eddie Hearn for a fight, you said he was a p**** and wouldn’t fight you. He’s now saying he will 100% fight you. Are you now saying that you won’t fight him? Can you just confirm you will not be fighting Eddie Hearn?’”

“I’m not a desperado. He called me out for a fight — I’m bang up for it.”

And I am certain someone in the media circus will oblige next time White is interviewed on an open platform. He’ll probably be sat next to one of his fighters, a Zuffa Boxing employee, in a Zuffa-branded tracksuit, as he trades answers, his shadow looming larger and larger over a row of confused professionals, feigning Zuffa smiles.

The boxing pie is only so big. Only so many can feel satiated regularly enough to dedicate their lives to it. And that is why this matters more than a silly fantasy bout between two rich men with microphones.

Boxing has always survived on borrowed time and borrowed faith. It asks too much of too many, and gives back too little to most. Yet fighters still rise before dawn to run empty roads, still bleed in anonymous gyms, clinging onto the slim hope that they can succeed under the brightest of lights and on the biggest of stages.

So when the conversation drifts toward promoters throwing punches, when headlines are handed to executives and oxygen is stolen from the people who actually risk everything, something sacred gets lost in the noise.

The boxing pie is only so big, yes. But it was never baked for the men in suits. It belongs to the fighters — always has, always should.