De La Hoya Says Zuffa Can't Freeze Him Out of Garcia vs Benn

Oscar De La Hoya isn't waiting for an invitation. The Golden Boy promoter says he'll be front and center for Ryan Garcia's showdown with Conor Benn, whether Zuffa likes it or not — and he's convinced they'd rather he stayed home. Speaking on Ariel Helwani's show, De La Hoya called it petty that anyone would try to keep him off the stage, and pushed back hard on the idea he could be edged out of promoting his own fighter.

The stakes are real. Garcia (25-2, 20 KO) is the reigning WBC welterweight champion and remains a Golden Boy fighter, which De La Hoya used as his central argument: it's a Golden Boy fight before it's anything else. Benn arrives at 25-1 (14 KO), fresh off a unanimous-decision win over Regis Prograis, and now competes under the Zuffa Boxing banner after Turki Alalshikh folded the promotion into the event. De La Hoya said Turki claims the show has already sold more than $6 million in tickets.

The Dana White Subplot

De La Hoya framed the exclusion as a deliberate move to keep him away from Dana White. He joked about whether they're worried he'll punch White in the nose, then insisted he has no intention of doing anything of the sort. His read is that the frostiness is about optics, not logistics — that someone tried to slip the arrangement past him without a heads-up.

For all the needle, the message underneath was cooperation. De La Hoya said he wants everyone to work together and told the other side, in his words, not to be afraid. He described a recent conversation with Garcia as good and said any friction aired publicly has since been smoothed over between the two of them.

His pitch is straightforward: he'll fly in, spend two full weeks promoting the card, and make sure Garcia gets what he's owed and steps in fully prepared. He wants his fighter treated the way he believes he deserves — and, more to the point, ready to go through Benn at 100 percent.

The backdrop matters here. Zuffa Boxing has been building momentum, with Edgar Berlanga and Richardson Hitchins — the latter a 20-0 super lightweight ranked #2 off an eighth-round stoppage of George Kambosos Jr — making their debuts under the banner. Garcia vs Benn slots into that project, which is exactly why the promotional turf war is worth watching. De La Hoya isn't conceding an inch of it.