Eddie Hearn may not have a good word to say about Dana White. Yet for that tension to extend beyond business rivalry and spill into media criticism might surprise a few. The friction between the Matchroom boss and the UFC CEO, whose Zuffa Boxing has been pushing further into mainstream boxing, has driven headlines in recent weeks.
The game of one-upmanship included efforts to sign star fighters from each other’s stables. White secured Jai Opetaia and Conor Benn, while Hearn responded by signing Tom Aspinall, the UFC’s heavyweight champion, to his talent agency. In his latest move, however, the English promoter turned his focus to the media, especially those covering UFC events, accusing them of favoring the promotion. Episodes, such as Benn’s reported $15 million payout and the situation involving Jon Jones, gave him plenty of material to work with.
“I just feel like, look, at the end of the day we give you access, right?” Hearn told a reporter. “So you can’t take the piss, but you can push me on quite like if I say something that you don’t think makes sense.”
Those remarks followed earlier comments in which he sharply criticized UFC media for not pressing Dana White with tougher questions. Speaking with iFL TV’s Kugan Cassius, Eddie Hearn faulted reporters for accepting White’s comments about UFC fighters who raised concerns over Conor Benn’s multi-million-dollar purse without challenging him.
Questions about consistency resurfaced when White addressed Jon Jones’s involvement in the proposed White House card. Jones publicly voiced frustration that the UFC did not include him on the event billed as UFC Freedom 250. Dana White reportedly said Jones was never under consideration for the card. Yet when confronted with Jones’s claim that he had been negotiating with the UFC, White said they were – “negotiating with him and negotiating with loads of fighters.”
Hearn argued that reporters could have held White accountable for those contradictions. But they did not.
Eddie Hearn calls out UFC media’s deference to Dana White
“They don’t; they don’t sit down with people. They don’t have real conversations and real questions,” Hearn told Cassius. “They want everything to be recorded. They want everything to be edited. They want to know what the questions are before they even start. And this is all part of the control. And it will drive him absolute like look at the aggravation in Dana’s life since he started boxing.”
Some may see the Matchroom head’s comments as an attempt to counter White’s growing influence.
Still, the discussion extends beyond a personal rivalry. Criticism of reporters covering UFC events has grown in recent months. One example is how the same question – “How do you feel about fighting in front of a home crowd?” – was framed in varying ways during the press conference for UFC 325, headlined by Alexander Volkanovski and Diego Lopes.
That dynamic reflects the UFC’s structure. Boxing operates through multiple sanctioning bodies and promoters in a fragmented system. The UFC, by contrast, runs under a centralized model. The promotion oversees events, fighters, bouts, championship belts, and purses.
In boxing, if a reporter echoes a particular promoter’s or sanctioning body’s position, another voice often challenges it. In the UFC’s centralized system, that counterbalance is less common, allowing the promotion to shape much of the public narrative.
