UFC brings cage-match bout to the White House, home of a president who favours cage-match politics

People hold a flag as President-elect Donald Trump arrives at UFC 309 at Madison Square Garden, Nov. 16, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

WASHINGTON — Cage-match fighting is coming to the White House to fete U.S. President Donald Trump, a proud proponent of cage-match politics.

In the coming weeks, crews will erect a 6-foot wire-mesh fence shaped into an octagon on the lawn, where UFC fighters will use a combination of kickboxing, jiujitsu, wrestling and other martial arts in a June 14 mixed martial arts show timed for Trump’s 80th birthday and as part of the nation’s 250th anniversary.

The celebration of bloody, brute force dovetails with Trump’s gleefully combative charisma and extreme ideological masculinity — a brawling, no-holds-barred approach to the highest office in the land.

“I have respect for fighters, you know, when you can take 200 shots to the face and then look forward to the second round,” Trump told podcaster Logan Paul as he campaigned for his second term.

Trump was the first sitting president to attend a UFC show, taking in a 2019 fight that was stopped because of a cut over the loser’s eye that left blood pouring down the fighter’s face.

To the uninitiated, the sport celebrates violence. It is wildly popular with young men.

“A lot of people don’t understand fighting and they think fighting is about anger. It’s not. If you’re angry when you fight, you’ll lose,” said veteran MMA referee and commentator “Big John” McCarthy.

“Fighting is about technique and style, and understanding how to make your opponent make mistakes while you don’t,” McCarthy said.

“I totally understand why he likes it,” he added of Trump. “Because I do.”

Friends with UFC and broadcast executives

It is hard to find a phrase more Trumpian than Ultimate Fighting Championship.

A committed devotee of hyperbole, Trump relishes grand descriptors that can elevate anything to its “ultimate” version. He also proudly fancies himself a fighter: “Fight! Fight! Fight!” became his 2024 campaign mantra, one crystalized after an assassination attempt that summer.

Then there is “championship,” another thing close to the heart of a president who constantly professes love for winning and those who do it frequently.

All of that means Trump giving UFC its largest-ever platform “is calculated. He knows what he’s doing,” said Kyle Kusz, a University of Rhode Island professor who studies the connection between sports and the far right.

Trump “uses UFC to portray himself as a manly sportsman,” said Kusz, who said he sees parallels between the sport’s style of masculinity and Trump’s approach to policy and politics.

The league is planning to issue 85,000 free tickets for the event. Trump said UFC boss Dana White, a longtime friend, will build “a 5,000-seat arena right outside the front door of the White House” and eight large screens in a nearby park for ticket-holders to watch from afar.

The show falls on a Sunday, deviating from UFC’s usual Saturday night time slot, and will be carried live on Paramount+, which is controlled by the Ellison family, also close allies of Trump. France even pushed back the Group of Seven summit it is hosting so as not to conflict with Trump’s birthday festivities.

Criticism of White House fight card

Trump has boasted that the event will feature “all top guys.” But fans online have panned the card for lacking top talent such as former two-division champion Jon Jones, who requested his release from the UFC immediately after being excluded from the White House show. Also absent is MMA icon Conor McGregor, whose first bout since 2021 would have been a seismic moment for the sport. The UFC’s White “knows the White House card sucks,” said former champion Ronda Rousey, who is mounting her own MMA comeback outside the UFC because she says the promotion would not meet her financial expectations.

Rousey, who is close to White, says the White House show “fell extremely short of expectations.”

While still being finalized, the card features two championship fights. Brazil’s Alex Periera will meet France’s Ciryl Gane for the interim UFC heavyweight title. Then Spanish-Georgian lightweight champion Ilia Topuria takes on interim champ Justin Gaethje, one of just two Americans who currently hold even a share of the UFC’s 11 championship belts.

The White House did not answer questions about criticism of the card or the event’s aggressive politics. Instead, communications director Steven Cheung, said, “This will be one of the greatest and most historic sports events in history.”

Cheung, a UFC spokesman before joining Trump’s 2016 campaign, called Trump’s event “a testament to his vision to celebrate America’s monumental 250th anniversary.”

A UFC spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump helped reinforce UFC’s mass appeal

Once famously derided as “human cockfighting” by late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., UFC has been a major sports league in the United States since signing a media-rights deal with ESPN in 2018, said Patrick Wyman, a historian and host of popular podcasts on the subject who is also a former longtime MMA journalist.

Trump, a fixture at heavyweight boxing matches in the 1980s, gave UFC a boost a generation ago by hosting early bouts, including 2001’s “Battle on the Boardwalk,” at his casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Wyman said that even as Trump and White have remained close, UFC has deliberately prioritized building the league’s brand over that of its individual fighters. That has kept most stars from achieving crossover appeal.

As a result, Wyman said UFC remains most popular with men in their mid-40s to early 60s — a demographic already inclined to be Trump supporters.

“I think it’s a pretty perfect encapsulation of the way that Donald Trump thinks about politics,” Wyman said of the White House event, citing its “transactional nature” and “how impossible it is to draw firm lines between business and politics.”

In 2014, Trump invested in his own, short-lived MMA league. A decade later, his reelection campaign enhanced his UFC ties, seeking to reach voters who do not usually engage in traditional politics.

Two days after he was convicted on 34 felony counts in a hush money case in June 2024, Trump went to a UFC bout in New Jersey, strolling out into the crowd with White while Kid Rock’s “American Bad Ass” blared. Trump’s campaign used footage of the raucous ovation to help launch its TikTok account.

Then, after his election victory, Trump triumphantly appeared with House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and a large political entourage at a UFC fight in New York. He also attended UFC bouts in Newark and Miami last year.

Trump, who has built a large portion of his domestic travel around sporting events, is not unique among presidents using sports to appeal to voters.

Republican George W. Bush zinging a pitch in from Yankee Stadium’s mound during the 2001 World Series is remembered as a moment of resilience after the Sept. 11 attacks. Republican Richard Nixon so publicly embraced his football fandom that aides worried it might alienate some voters, said Chris Cillizza, author of “Power Players: Sports, Politics, and the American Presidency.”

Such worries are gone today, though, since sports “now tends to self-select by political affiliation,” he said.

“In an era where people feel like politicians are mostly weirdo aliens,” Cillizza said “sports — playing them, having knowledge about them — represents one of the best ways to prove to voters you are actually a human being.”

Associated Press writers Greg Beacham in Los Angeles and Michelle L. Price contributed to this report.

Will Weissert, The Associated Press