Just days after his conviction this year on criminal charges related to his involvement in a “hush money” case, the former president and current Republican Party candidate for next month’s elections, Donald Trump, made a surprising choice for his first public appearance as a convicted felon running for office: an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event.
Flanked by UFC President Dana White, a longtime friend and associate, as well as a swarm of Secret Service agents, Trump arrived at the June event in New Jersey to a hero’s welcome. As the raucous crowd cheered him on, a song by the musician Kid Rock, “American Badass,” played in the background.
Trump soaked in the adoration, stopping to shake hands and pose for photos with spectators, against the backdrop of a crowd chanting “We want Trump” and “Fuck Joe Biden.” Trump, whose sentencing hearing in the criminal case would later be postponed to September, was later seen backstage meeting with several prominent UFC fighters, including Brazilian light heavyweight champion Alex Pereira.
This was not Trump’s first visit to a UFC event, even as a politician. But it revealed something significant: the symbiotic relationship between the right-wing, male-coded counterculture that the UFC represents and Trump’s own political fortunes, which have tapped into the same energies to power his emergence as an icon of the conservative movement.
Trump’s embrace of the UFC’s culture of defiance, machismo and spectacle has helped buttress his image as a rebel against liberal norms. It has also hastened the replacement of America’s conventional political culture with an abrasive new blend of entertainment and confrontational politics, perfectly embodied by Trump himself.
The UFC rose in tandem with Trump’s own political fortunes and Trump himself has long been a patron and supporter of the organization. This mutually beneficial relationship, which has already reshaped American politics and culture, shows no sign of running out of steam soon and has quietly become a major force powering the president’s continued political ascendance.
The UFC was established in the early 1990s, not with the aim of becoming a mass cultural phenomenon, but with the humbler goal of establishing a new mixed martial arts (MMA) league that would allow fighters from different disciplines, including wrestlers, boxers and jujitsu grapplers, to compete against one another.
The league set out with minimal regulations on its fights beyond basic prohibitions against eye-gouging and fish-hooking. Its events attracted young men with notorious taglines like “There are no rules,” emphasizing the near-limitless violence that spectators could enjoy.
Within a few years, the violent nature of the burgeoning sport drew the attention of lawmakers, such as Sen. John McCain, who famously referred to the organization in 1996 as “human cockfighting” and led a campaign to ban the UFC. As a result, 36 states enacted laws forbidding what they referred to as “no-holds-barred” fighting, relegating the UFC to a handful of rural states and smaller U.S. markets.
By 2001, the UFC was on the brink of bankruptcy. Despite improving regulations and working with athletic commissions to have events licensed, the organization was still unable to penetrate larger markets or pay-per-view platforms. Its owners eventually sold the league to Las Vegas casino executives Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, along with their business partner White, who worked as a manager for some of the UFC’s talent at the time.
Lorenzo was a former member of the Nevada State Athletic Commission and was able to secure the UFC’s license in Nevada, which allowed the new ownership to put on UFC events in Las Vegas. As the organization slowly regained its footing by winning pay-per-view events and new advertising opportunities, it reached out to Trump in the hopes of holding UFC shows at his Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City. Trump agreed, and the UFC went on to host two landmark events in the city in 2001 that would become the stuff of marketing lore.
In White’s later recollection, it was those Trump-supported events — UFC 30 and UFC 31 — that allowed the league to gain national popularity and attain a foothold in other states across the country. When the UFC returned to Atlantic City for another event in 2005, this time with White at the helm as its president, it was now a popular organization breaking into the cultural mainstream.
This is why White credits Trump with helping to catapult the UFC to success.
“When we first bought this company, no venues would even take us,” White recounted in an interview. “Donald Trump was the first guy to say, ‘We’ll do the fights here.’ Trump gave us our first shot over at [Taj Mahal], and then when we left and went to a bigger arena at the Meadowlands, he was one of the first guys there in his seat.”
While the UFC and Trump went their separate ways thereafter, White’s loyalty to Trump never waned. Years later, when he announced his intention to take part in the 2016 presidential race, his friend White, now sitting atop a competitive fighting empire, took the opportunity to return the favor.
In July 2016, White took the stage at the Republican National Convention and delivered a fiery speech endorsing Trump’s presidential campaign. Over the course of four minutes, White boasted about Trump’s loyalty and work ethic. He lavished praise on the candidate’s business savvy and rehashed the tale of Trump’s magnanimous support for the UFC during the organization’s dark age.
“Arenas around the world refused to host our events. Nobody took us seriously — except for Donald Trump,” White told the crowd. “Donald was the first guy that recognized the potential that we saw in the UFC and encouraged us to build our business … before it was popular. … Trump is a fighter and I know he will fight for this country,” White told the crowd.
Since then, White has continued to amplify Trump’s messaging from his perch atop the UFC. He has supported some of Trump’s most controversial policies, including his intention to build a wall along the border with Mexico. White even celebrated the UFC’s 25th anniversary by releasing a documentary showcasing the fight league’s history with Trump. Titled “Combatant-in-Chief,” the 14-minute film is a case study in how the UFC became a platform for Trump’s politics.
In 2018, White visited Trump at the White House alongside the former interim welterweight champion and right-wing media personality Colby Covington. They posed for photos in the Oval Office, solidifying Covington’s image as the athletic embodiment of Trump’s MAGA ideology and its aim to “Make America great again.” Covington has continued to leverage this persona, frequently echoing conservative talking points as part of his professional branding.
Other fighters have followed suit, with many going so far as to campaign for Trump during the 2020 election cycle. Former UFC fighter Jorge Masvidal took part in a “Fighters Against Socialism” bus tour with Donald Trump Jr., during which he delivered impassioned speeches at each stop imploring attendees not to allow the Democratic Party to erode American freedoms.
“Obviously, I am not a politician,” Masvidal said at the tour stop at a popular MMA gym in Florida. “I may not be schooled in a lot of these political issues like some of you, but I do know Latinos. Latinos are not lazy people looking for a handout. Latinos don’t want free stuff. We want freedom. … We either reelect President Trump and keep America great again, or we let Joe Biden and the radical left take us down the slippery slopes of socialism and misery.” His views were echoed by former UFC champions Henry Cejudo and Tito Ortiz, both of whom spoke at various “Latinos for Trump” events in 2020.
The UFC’s handling of the 2020 election cycle cemented the organization as the sports arm of Trump’s political ideology. No other American sports league invested as much time and effort as the UFC in promoting Trump and helping him secure a second term in office. This connection underscored the growing relationship between MMA fighters and the modern American conservative movement — a connection that would come into relief during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.
On that day, supporters of Trump, including far-right groups such as the Proud Boys, stormed the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., as Congress was in the process of certifying the electoral votes. This occurred shortly after a speech by Trump, during which he falsely claimed that the 2020 presidential election had been “stolen” by Biden and the Democrats and urged his supporters to march on the Capitol.
Hundreds of protesters breached police barriers and eventually entered the Capitol complex, where they would engage in an orgy of vandalism and violence. Among those present was UFC pioneer Pat Miletich, the league’s first welterweight champion, who posed for pictures outside the Capitol during the insurrection, alongside members of the Proud Boys. Following the events of that day, Miletich was fired from his role as a commentator for the MMA promotion organization Legacy Fighting Alliance.
Scott Fairlamb, another MMA fighter and gym owner who was present at the Capitol, became the first person to plead guilty to assaulting a police officer during the insurrection. He was sentenced to 41 months in prison.
Miletich and Fairlamb’s involvement in the Capitol riot became an insidious example of the relationship between some MMA fighters and the far right — a connection further underscored by the proliferation of MAGA ideologues and conspiracy theories within the MMA community.
Once relegated to the fringes of the sporting landscape, MMA’s culture remains rooted in rugged individualism and defiance of authority. These characteristics not only shaped the athletes involved in the sport but helped create a fertile ground for far-right sentiments to take root.
In the aftermath of the insurrection, which led to Trump’s second impeachment, the former president started to reconnect with the UFC as a means of seeking redemption. In July 2021 — seven months after leaving office — Trump attended UFC 264 in Las Vegas, where he was met with chants of “USA” from an adoring crowd.
While White told reporters following the event that Trump’s presence at the show was just “two friends, who are fight fans, watching a fight,” the event served as the latest example of Trump’s dependence on the UFC as a means of softening his image and presenting himself in a favorable light to young conservative fight fans.
The strategy worked. In the following years, Trump continued to attend UFC shows and appear in public with an array of popular fighters. He also appeared on UFC programming, including an appearance on a UFC podcast hosted by former champion Matt Serra in 2023.
The hourlong discussion, which focused on Trump’s long-standing affection for combat sports, was part of a campaign strategy designed to make the former president relatable to young male audiences with little interest in politics. The links between the UFC and his campaign have become even more explicit: One of Trump’s political advisers, Steven Cheung, formerly worked for the UFC as its director of communications for public affairs.
Meanwhile, as Americans soured on Biden’s presidency following an economic downturn resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Trump once again emerged as a viable contender for Republicans seeking to defeat the incumbent in 2024. Trump’s UFC appearances grew more frequent and the crowd responses more raucous. Conservative media fawned over the UFC, presenting it as a bastion for conservative sports fans seeking an alternative to so-called “woke” sports like the NFL and NBA, which were accused of promoting LGBTQ+ rights and other progressive values over more “traditional” principles.
A new crop of MMA fighters who support Trump has also emerged in the UFC. And they have brought with them even more audacious expressions of bigotry. These behaviors, which would previously have been punished by the UFC, are now being rewarded with title fights and featured slots on shows, in an effort to attract a conservative fan base radicalized by online culture wars.
For an example, one need look no further than Sean Strickland, a former UFC welterweight champion who was allowed to compete in the main event of one of the UFC’s biggest shows, despite going on an anti-LGBTQ+ tirade a few days earlier at a prefight press conference. Instead of censuring him for his comments, White defended Strickland — a self-professed former neo-Nazi — claiming he had been “baited” by a reporter. Underlining his ostensible commitment to free speech, White added that, as UFC president, he did not intend to “control what people say.”
The UFC’s brash political stance, coupled with White’s bombastic persona, has caught the attention of mainstream media, including The New York Times, which profiled him in a lengthy feature that delved into White’s growing political influence within Trump’s MAGA base. The article described in lurid prose how White had “steered his once teetering cage-fighting enterprise to the carnivorous heart of the national mainstream,” positioning himself at the “intersection of sports, business and the forever culture wars.”
“His base is Trump’s base,” Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s former White House counselor, observed about White in that same article. “And Trump’s base is his base.”
The relationship that Conway identified between Trump and the UFC has not only stayed strong but deepened further over the past year of Trump’s election campaign. When Trump — face bloodied, surrounded by Secret Service agents — stood upright after surviving an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in July, he raised his fist to his supporters in the crowd and shouted the words: “Fight! Fight!” Among those supporters was White, who posted the now-famous picture of a bloodied Trump with his fist raised, stating that it “perfectly reflects exactly the man I know Donald Trump to be. He is the toughest, most resilient, American bad ass on the planet.”
White concluded his post with an excited announcement that he would be introducing Trump at the Republican National Convention, which he did the following week. It marked White’s third time speaking at the convention in support of Trump. As Trump’s first appearance after the assassination attempt, it was arguably the most significant. White has continued to be part of Trump’s campaign entourage, speaking on Sunday at Trump’s Madison Square Garden event.
By embracing the UFC’s ethos, Trump continues to blur the lines between politics and spectacle, reshaping American culture in profound ways, the ramifications of which will be felt for years. Trump has embraced the persona of a fighter — an unrelenting warrior against a decadent liberal establishment — and his close ties with the UFC have helped him bolster that image.
Although MMA remains a relatively niche sport compared to titanic industries like the NBA and NFL, it has taken on new life as a refuge for modern conservatives and a stage for America’s ongoing culture war. Trump may not be a fighter in the UFC octagon, but he has nonetheless become a combatant in a war for America’s identity, waged by legions of young supporters and fans of this sport.
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