8 Takeaways from the UFC's White House Fever Dream
Trump owns TKO stock, fighters were paid in Trump's crypto-currency, Eric Trump advises one of the advertisers, and it's clear the taxpayer paid for most of the event. Oh, and add a dash of racism.
On 14 June, the day of President Donald Trump’s eightieth birthday, the UFC held a cage fighting event on the front lawn of the White House. The run-up had been covered exhaustively, most excellently by my friend Karim Zidan at Sports Politika, and by the time the cage went up, we thought the weirdness had been fully catalogued.
There was the sitting president of the United States who had quietly bought stock in the UFC’s parent company while promoting the event. There was the federal lawsuit that tried and failed to halt the whole thing as “deeply corrupt”. There was the absence of any athletic commission willing to sanction the fights. There was a security bill of over 10 million USD the White House insisted cost the taxpayer nothing.
We were wrong. The full scale of the insanity did not reveal itself until the event itself.
On the night, a UFC commentator posted and hurriedly deleted screenshots that appeared to show Eric Trump asking him whether the fights were rigged. A victorious heavyweight used his live post-fight interview to inform the nation that Michelle Obama is a man.
A bonus for winning fighters would be paid in Trump’s own cryptocurrency. UFC fighter Sean Strickland was swarmed at the public fan festival and carried off by a multi-agency federal detail to chants of “USA”. And Alex Pereira had assured his followers that he had communed with nature and that it would therefore not rain.
Brace for the Sports and Crime Briefing’s takeways and why the UFC’s White House event was rather more worrying than weird.
Whose money were the fighters actually paid in?
