Here's What I Think About the UFC Hosting a July 4th Event at the White House
It's weird and unusual news, so I've put together 10 takeaways to help better organize my thoughts.
The news last week that President Donald Trump and UFC intend on hosting an event on the grounds of the White House on July 4, 2026 was so bizarre that it took me several days to process. With time to digest, I’ve come to the following conclusions:
This event, even if it doesn’t actually happen, is a reminder the UFC has used polarization, not a big-tent approach, to ascend to political, cultural and economic heights. Where once the organization believed their product and the sport of mixed martial arts (MMA) was for everyone, that is no longer the case and hasn’t been for some time. By tying their brand so closely to Trump, they’re rejecting those who find the association confusing and abhorrent. Yet, you can see the logic in their approach. It’s precisely that pivot that has allowed them to be invited into spaces unimaginable even a decade ago. Furthermore, the protection racket offered by Trump World confers a vast array of benefits that would otherwise be beyond any sports organization’s reach. This pivot isn’t without its downsides (more on that in a moment), but it should be noted UFC didn’t win over America as some have claimed. That objective no longer exists. Instead, it repudiated about half of the country to fully win over the ascendent side with power and cultural cachet.
It’s really not clear what the long-term risk is of UFC becoming the official sport of the MAGA movement. As aforementioned, there currently is, at best, very little measureable downside. In fact, they’re on the cusp of signing a new years-long broadcasting deal that will enrich them in ways simply without precendent in the history of combat sports. For now and the forseeable future, their situation is very secure. However, Trump is unpopular and polling suggests is underwater on virtually every issue of note.
How this changes between now and the next Fourth of July is hard to predict. That’s even truer when we project several years into the future. But one thing is certain: UFC’s brand is becoming intertwined with a political identity that is causing sharp social and political divisions escalating by the day. UFC might be calculating that even if there is a future backlash or decline in the MAGA brand, enough Americans will hold onto some form of right-wing identarianism for it not to affect their business. They could well be right, but let’s be very clear: this is a gamble. While it looks unassailable at the movement’s peak, it’ll be worth revisiting when we're at its trough.
Clearly Trump is using UFC’s muscular imagery to bolster his own. Karim Zidan has been following the interlocking fates of Trump and UFC for some time and observes it better than I could. He has called what Trump wants to do with UFC “authoritarian theatre” and notes this comes from a playbook used several times over in history: “sports, especially combat sports, were used as tools to cultivate [Benito] Mussolini’s ideal masculinity and portray Italy as a strong and powerful nation. Similarly, Trump has relied on the UFC to project his tough-guy image, and to celebrate his brand of nationalistic masculinity. From name-dropping champions who endorse him to suggesting a tournament that would pit UFC fighters against illegal immigrants, Trump has repeatedly found ways to make UFC-style machismo a part of his political brand.”
You’ll hear the argument that “the keep politics out of sports crowd is silent” from those upset about this development. The claim is technically true, but also a dead letter. In the aughts and 2010s, the right objected to what was perceived as left-wing sports media interjecting politics into their coverage when it didn’t belong. The reality ended up being that the right just wanted their politics interjected, not that politics itself had no place. Now the entire debate is irrelevant. Polarized identity has swallowed virtually every facet of our lived experiences in the U.S. What music you listen to, where you live, what sports you watch and more are all cultural signifiers of the tribe to which you belong. One’s proximity to a Whole Foods now is a reliable indicator of voting prefernces. The right has essentially abandoned the claim impartiality should be the defining feature of how we enjoy sports and sports media coverage. Accusing them of hypocrisy in a world where they are reveling in it achieves nothing.
Others like John Nash and The MMA Draw have been great at reporting on this, but UFC has increasingly used government largesse as a way to boost its bottom line. If a municipal, state or even national government want to pay them (often in conjucntion with their TKO brethren the WWE) to bring their product to town, they’ll oblige. What’s noteworthy here is this doesn’t exclude governments with notoriously awful human rights records like Saudi Arabia or Azerbaijan. UFC does not seem reticent to rent their services to dictators or theocratic monarchies. In that sense, it seems quite fitting the homegrown authoritarian gets to rent UFC for a party of his own making as well.
Of all my concerns or objections, the issue of decorum ranks closer to the bottom of the list, but is animating some who oppose Trump. They note this proposed event feels about a step removed from holding monster truck rallies on the South Lawn. Perhaps this isn’t unfair, but reducing one’s fixation in this moment to appearances - particularly along class lines as it relates to entertainment preferences - doesn’t feel like a particularly useful observation. I get the concerns of Trump turning the White House into another failed Atlantic City Taj Mahal casino or a recreated scene from ‘Idiocracy’, but it’s difficult for me to place this as a chief concern given all other factors.
Having watched a few friends of mine - some Iraq War veterans, some with advanced degrees, all who love their country - lose their jobs in DOGE and other federal government purges since the Trump administration took over only for the same government to seemingly decide cage fights with no real clear relationship to the significance of July 4th is a worthwhile expense is maddening. The White House property is 18 acres and there is room to host an event there if the president so chooses. However, it’s not a simple logistical endeavor, to say nothing of what the U.S. government must be paying the UFC to bring their product to town. That this is deemed a worthy and valuable expense while loyal, hard-working servants to the country get told their salaries are ‘waste’ is not something I will soon forget.
When news of this event broke, some of the first fighters who showed eagerness to participate on the card are the most law-breaking, scandal-plagued fighters in UFC history. There’s more to the story in that both Jon Jones and Conor McGregor have a larger aim of image rehabilitation they’re working on independent of this. In that sense, the UFC being at the White House is just a convenient vehicle for them. But it also speaks volumes that news of the possible celebration served as a bat signal to the worst people the sport has to offer.
As others have noted, it’s not clear who would even be on the card. The UFC currently has one American champion. If the star power of the fighters who compete is big enough, maybe it won’t matter that they aren’t American. But again, UFC fights on the White House lawn has virtually no meaning relative to the Fourth of July and that fact doesn’t get easier to obscure if that event also doesn’t have many Americans of note who can compete in bouts of significance.
Friends of mine texted me when news of this broke to see if I was going to attend this event. The answer is a hard no. I doubt I’d be able to get credentialed to an event like this, but it doesn’t matter. I do not consider visiting Trump’s White House any kind of honor and if there’s one thing I think is presently important, it’s not using my media role to launder his government’s image.
I hadn’t heard of the “migrants vs. UFC” thing before. There is. I bottom for that man. Also it is very funny to note that there aren’t even that many American UFC champs.
The MAGA movement effectively dies when Trump is gone, and he may only have a couple of years, if not months, of having enough mental acuity to show up at an event like this and do the Mussolini wave.
And I think he knows that. Everything he does now is for his short-term vanity -- the military parade, running the Kennedy Center, declaring war against academia and the media because a facts-based assessment of his presidency is not good, etc. His policies are literally going to kill off some of his base.
Trump may be able to run out the clock and remain a revered figure within his base until his death. Once he's gone, he'll get tossed aside like George W. Bush -- or even Stalin or Mussolini.
At that point, the question we'll have for Dana White is why he tied his brand to a loser. Because in the verdict of history, Trump will be exactly that.