On Sunday, the UFC staged it’s Freedom 250 event on the south lawn of the White House. In terms of the fights, the event delivered exactly what MMA fans had been hoping for: spectacle, size, bright lights, big stakes and pageantry. The MMA community, however, was so starved for this kind of a show that they eschewed any attempt at interrogating the UFC-Trump connection.
But what Sunday night showed is that despite their repudiation, understanding the politics of UFC White House is important to really grasp what the event more accurately meant and symbolized.
With a day or so to process what we saw, I put together a video highlighting what I believe are the most important political observations of the event. While Josh Hokit’s rancid comments about Michelle Obama have grabbed headlines, the union between corporate power, surveillance and defense tech, patriotism theater, military contractors and Trump, Inc. tells us much more about where mixed martial arts (MMA) under the UFC is headed.
