It seems that UFC president Dana White and Holly Holm’s manager Lenny Fresquez aren’t the best of pals.
Dana White doesn’t really get along well with MMA managers. This is pretty well known. But ever since Holly Holm even began negotiating to come into the UFC, White seems to have had a special kind of hatred for her manager Lenny Fresquez. When Fresquez went public with their initial offer in 2014, White said that their meeting went badly and that he had no interest in Holm whatsoever after that.
Obviously, things changed and she signed. Not only that, she went onto win the UFC women’s bantamweight title by knocking out Ronda Rousey. But following Holm’s loss to Miesha Tate at UFC 196, White lashed out again at Fresquez in an ESPN Radio interview (via TMZ):
“He’s an old boxing guy who thinks he’s smart, and he’s not.”
“I don’t know if Holly really knows what she lost. I think she has so much faith in the people that surround her, she feels like, ‘Well, they got me this far.'”
The idea behind that statement is that apparently White believes Fresquez forced Holly to take the Tate fight instead of waiting for the rematch with Rousey, which the UFC wanted. As expected, Fresquez responded:
“I didn’t make Holly fight Miesha. Holly is the boss. I work for her. We gave her the different options. Fight Miesha in March. Wait for Ronda in November or December. She said, ‘I don’t want to wait. I want to fight.'”
“Dana hates my guts. It’s personal. How could it be my fault? Holly is the boss.”
The UFC has decided that Tate will fight Rousey for a third time with her new title on the line, but Fresquez would prefer a different plan – a Holm rematch with Tate first: