UFC president Dana White explains how things went down from his end on the Mike Tyson-Hulu dispute.
Over the weekend, boxing legend Mike Tyson unloaded on streaming platform Hulu on Twitter. The former heavyweight champion wasn’t happy about the new mini-series about his life, claiming it was done without his consent.
In one of Tyson’s tweets, he thanked UFC president Dana White for turning down Hulu’s offer of “millions” to be involved in the project.
Hulu tried to desperately pay my brother @danawhite millions without offering me a dollar to promote their slave master take over story about my life. He turned it down because he honors friendship and treating people with dignity. I’ll never forget what he did for me just like pic.twitter.com/amk65CjtvJ
— Mike Tyson (@MikeTyson) August 6, 2022
During Tuesday’s post-Contender Series scrum, White gave his side of the story.
“So we did a deal, or were about to do a deal, we were on the verge of a deal with Hulu to promote this Mike Tyson unauthorized biography or whatever it is. And Craig Borsari, my head of production came to me and said ‘Hey, I’m hearing that Tyson isn’t happy about this thing,’” White explained to the media.
“I call Mike and said ‘We’re in a deal with these guys, we have a verbal (agreement) to do this deal with them.’ And he said, ‘Dana, they’re f—ng me…’ That’s all I had to hear.
“I said, ‘I’m out, then. I’ll squash this deal.’ So I killed the deal and I told them that it was over and that I killed it and we won’t be promoting that show for Hulu and he did what he did.”
According to the show’s producers, they weren’t able to reach out to Tyson because “his life rights were already taken.
Tyson, via his reps, immediately fired back, calling it a “flat-out lie” and saying his life rights option “expired years ago.” He then called the project an “exploitation of a black man” and blasted Huly for “hiring Black sacrificial lambs to play the part as front men for their backdoor robbery.”
Nonetheless, “Mike” is set to premiere on Hulu on August 25th.