Dana White takes a dig at Bellator and fighters swing back

Although things have usually been cordial between MMA's two biggest organizations Presidents. Things might be headed down a different path soon. After an interesting UFC on ESPN 15 card headlined with Frankie Edgar making a successful debut at Bantamweight, Dana White took to the mic for his post card break down. The press quite innocently started to pepper the President with some questions not dealing with the card. While his responses to one weren't as verbose as it used to be, the other one was classic old school Dana White.

He was asked his opinion about the possibility of Hall Of Famer, Oscar de la Hoya making a return as an active boxer. The highlight comment in his retort was interesting to say the least.

The two have had bitter words for each other going back way before there was ever talk of Conor McGregor versus Floyd Mayweather.

While Dana White has said in the past nobody wants to see old men fight, he was and is fully behind Mike Tyson giving it another go. Then things got interesting.

The last time Dana White cross-promoted with another organization was PRIDE. And he got burned badly in that deal and swore he'd never do it again. Call him stubborn, or steadfast; he's kept his word on it.

Fans around MMA have clamored for cross-promotion fights between Bellator and the UFC. And he once and for all put that to bed.

When told that Scott Coker feels he has the best 205 division with Jon Jones going to heavyweight, Dana White brushed it off. His response was:

"Guys, everybody they have in their Light heavyweight division we let go of. He's got the best Light heavyweight division? We let all those guys go. It's like the f***ing dumbest thing I've ever heard. But I get it. He's got to f***ing do his thing. I'm not sh****ng on him. He's got to try and do his thing. He's got to try to sell fights. The way you don't sell fights is, say I've got the best light heavyweight division in the world, everybody that was there was let go from here".

He then said the idea was "silly" to cross-promote, and he knew nothing of their roster. And that's where opinion slides into some little white lies. Dana White is a student of combat sports, like him or not. So he very much knows the talent, at least the bigger names across other promotions. And one holding multiple gold, Patricio Pitbull fired a salvo right back at the UFC president.

Any way works fine for me. I'm sure if @danawhite and the @UFC are open to it @BellatorMMA will let me go there fight their champions. I will even personally bet 1 million dollars with White that I win. How does that sound for an incentive?

— Patricio Freire (@PatricioPitbull) August 23, 2020

And plenty of other fighters didn't take too kindly to Dana White's assessment. As far his comment about Bellator's talent being let go from UFC, that's simply not the case either. The only one (at 205) that was let go, asked for his release, in Corey Anderson.

Yes, guys like Ryan Bader, Douglas Lima, Gegard Mousasi, Rory MacDonald and others left as free agents. They left for more money and because Coker has the reputation of being a fair.

Dana White goes on the bottom line and if he could get over the burn job he suffered, it would make a lot of sense to do something together.

After all, it's what the fans want. And if it was to ever happen Dana White might just get the shock of his life as majority of Bellator's roster could easily hang with if not defeat their UFC counterparts.