MMA: America’s Pastime?

Preface: Before I proceed, let me get this out of the way; while I’m a lifetime registered Independent, I’m definitely left of center and an admitted Trump-hater. But I promise I’m not out to bash the president here, or offer up any political views (aside from maybe throwing a little shade at the MAGA bros, because… I mean, come on).

Introduction

When I heard talk of a UFC card taking place at the White House, my initial reaction was something along the lines of: Why stop there? Why not a WWE event with some monster trucks jumping through hoops of fire on the lawn while Ted Nugent shotguns a beer and kills a guitar solo on the roof? Because apparently that’s how serious our government is. I assumed it was just another attempt to flex the alpha male image that’s somehow traveled from podcast bros to the upper levels of government, via the late-20s-to-early-40s White male demographic, and that the idea would fade and it would never happen.

To the contrary, talk of the White House card has been ubiquitous since the initial announcement. For an event that, up until recently, was hypothetical (and still doesn’t have a single fight officially booked), it’s managed to dominate the MMA news cycle and get significant mentions in non-MMA media. Seemingly every fighter–even some retired–is publicly asking to be on the card, and MMA outlets are churning out content based on the faintest rumor.

Recently, Dana White and the UFC released artist renderings of what the White House and Lincoln Memorial will look like for the event. Like everything else about this whole situation, it’s bizarre. But it got me wondering—has anything like this ever happened before? 

Precedence for Sports at the White House

President Trump was not the first combat sports enthusiast to run our country. Theodore Roosevelt, who boxed during his time at Harvard in the early 1900s, would often bring in boxers to spar in the White House. At one point, an Army captain hit the president so hard that it detached his retina, leaving his vision blurry for the rest of his life. That ended his Presidential boxing career, but he finished his time in the White House practicing Japanese Jiu-Jitsu. 

While Teddy never hosted public fights, the White House grounds do have a long history with sports. According to the White House Historical Association, professional baseball games were played on what’s now the Ellipse as far back as the Civil War era. By the late 1800s, baseball had become America’s pastime—declared “the hurrah game of the Republic” by poet Walt Whitman. Historian Eliot Asinof described it as “more civilized than a boxing bout or a cock fight.” He probably couldn’t have imagined that over a century later, so-called “human cockfighting” (a phrase coined by the late Republican Senator John McCain) would not only take baseball’s spot on the White House lawn but also vie for its place as America’s defining sport.

America’s New Pastime

In his Feburary 2025 article, “Empire: How Dana White’s UFC Conquered America,” Rolling Stone’s Jack Crosbie called MMA “a sport that over the past 30 years has gone from being a late-night cable TV sideshow to a new American pastime” and reported that “depending on whom you ask, MMA is the third-largest sport in the world…with anywhere from 300 million to 600 million fans worldwide.”

Eve Batey of Vanity Fair noted that, “if the White House match happens, it will be an incredible turnaround for a sport that was banned in most states until just a couple of decades ago.” He then details how, in 1996, Senator McCain famously campaigned to completely eradicate MMA from the US, sending letters to the governor of each state urging them to outlaw the sport. Now, almost 20 years removed from McCain’s crusade, MMA is not only on track to replace baseball as America’s pastime, but has also become enmeshed with his own Republican party. 

The Convergence of the UFC and Right-Wing Politics

Roughly 60 percent of UFC fans are men aged 25 to 44—a demographic that’s been, as Crosbie puts it, “mashed in the face by the ass end of the American political system for the better part of 20 years.” In other words, MMA speaks to working-class frustration and modern ideas of masculinity. According to Luke Thomas, a longtime MMA commentator and podcaster, MMA fans and fighters have always leaned right, but the UFC as an organization was presented as being neutral in an effort to gain more mainstream appeal. However, that went completely out the window when COVID-19 hit the US and Dana White publicly opposed government lockdowns and vowed to hold events during the pandemic. I believe that this was a business decision, rather than a political move. Regardless of his intentions, however, he immediately transformed into a luminary for Conservatives fighting what they viewed as governmental oppression.

“It is expressly right-wing now,” Thomas said of MMA. “The fan base and the sport more generally have been ideologically homogenized.” You can see this clearly not only in the fans, but the fighters. Beyond Colby Covington’s over-the-top MAGA cosplay, guys like Sean Strickland have built blue-collar personas while also defending billionaires like Trump as “one of us.” (Ironic considering Strickland recently called Derek Moneyberg a scumbag grifter, while Moneyberg’s business model looks suspiciously similar to Trump University. But I digress.) Who can forget Jorge Masvidal using his retirement interview in the octagon to lead a “Let’s Go Brandon” chant, rather than reflect on his long, notable career. Or more recently, Jon Jones doing the YMCA “Trump Dance” to celebrate his title defense against Stipe Miocic–which he called the biggest moment of his life. Kayla Harrison also made sure to wrap her new belt around the President upon exiting the cage, and I’ve lost count of how many other fighters have rushed to greet him after a fight like he’s giving them some sort of holy blessing. 

I think it’s important to pause here and distinguish MMA from the UFC. If you’re reading an article on this site, you most likely understand the difference already. But just in case someone is new to the sport or has randomly stumbled across this writing: Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) refers to the sport, while the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is the premier organization for MMA fights. MMA=basketball. UFC=NBA. While I would argue that MMA fans in general lean conservative, other organizations are not generally associated directly with any particular political party, like the UFC.

Despite the fact that the UFC has Trump walk to Kid Rock’s “American Badass” with messages about saving the country blasting over the speakers, and notwithstanding the endless amount of “glazing” (as the kids say) by the fans, I’d argue that Trump’s connection to the UFC isn’t actually political–it’s personal. He’s been friends with Dana White for decades, and they look out for each other. Dana has even admitted that he’s not much into politics, but spoke at the RNC as a favor to Trump. More recently, in an interview with CBS, White said, “I am an American citizen. Biden was my president. Trump is my president…the sitting president or the ex-president of the United States wants to come to your event, you treat them with respect.” It’s worth noting as well that TKO CEO Ari Emanuel—a major Kamala Harris donor—runs the UFC’s parent company.

Trump is Not a Casual

Apart from his relationship with White, Trump is a genuine fan of combat sports. He has worked with boxing promoters over the years and was a very early supporter of the UFC. When the company was having trouble finding places to hold events, Trump offered up his Atlantic City casinos. “Trump got it,” White said. “He was there for the first prelim of the night and stayed through the main event.”

While Kash Patel, Ted Cruz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, RFK Jr. and the like show up to fights for photo-ops, Trump’s presence is real. He might fake his way through religion or gun culture, but not the fight game. Like him or not, he’s been in the UFC’s corner since the beginning, and it makes sense that he’d want to bring the sport he loves to the world’s biggest stage, while putting over a loyal friend in the process.

Conclusion

So maybe a fight at the White House isn’t as far-fetched as I initially thought. Still, unfair or not, something about those artist renderings of a cage on the lawn just feels sleezy to me. Yes, sports have been played on the grounds, but those were clean-cut, all-American baseball players (at least in my imagination). As Uncle Chael P. Sonnen once said, MMA is “a cage fight between two half-naked men for a paycheck and the applause of a drunken audience.” Whatever the case, in June of 2026, a sea of red-hat-clad thirty-something-year-old bros will undoubtedly descend on the nation’s capital for the International Fight Week festivities. We’re going to hear about it non-stop until then, and it’s going to be a big, stupid clown show that I want nothing to do with. I’ll see you there. 

References

Batey, Eve. “Donald Trump Promises Big Beautiful UFC Fight To Celebrate America’s 250th Anniversary.” Vanity Fair, 4 July 2025, https://www.vanityfair.com/style/story/donald-trump-white-house-ufc-match?srsltid=AfmBOorPRUVhf_4eznCbdLkNbn93K-aypFCrqQOlVJcNooaC7_LFzOYE. Accessed 9 Oct. 2025. 

Crosbie, Jack. “Empire of Blood: How Dana White’s UFC Conquered America.” Rolling Stone, Rolling Stone, 21 Jan. 2025, www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-sports/dana-white-ufc-conquered-america-mma-1235231420/. 

Huntington, Morgan. “Presidents Who Played Sports at the White House: Booth Western Art Museum.” Booth Western Art Museum | Cartersville, GA, 17 Feb. 2025, boothmuseum.org/presidents-who-played-sports-at-the-white-house/. Accessed 9 Oct. 2025. 

Treese, Joel D. “Baseball and the White House in the Nineteenth Century.” WHHA (En-US), www.whitehousehistory.org/baseball-and-the-white-house-in-the-nineteenth-century. Accessed 9 Oct. 2025.