Photograph by G. Edward Johnson, via Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.

In an apt omen of things to come, the first prefight press conference for UFC Freedom 250 opened with an AI-generated promotional video and ended with an unplanned altercation. It was early May; the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s “D.C. Takeover”—the culmination of Donald Trump’s promise to bring the UFC to the White House—was still more than a month away. But UFC President Dana White convened the event’s stars for a quick Q&A in Newark, New Jersey. Most of the fighters came dressed in suits, button-downs, or athleisure, but heavyweight Josh “the Incredible Hok” Hokit arrived wearing a long black cloak, an American-flag-themed skullcap, and matching gloves—candy cane stripes trailing down every finger, a solid blue block across his knuckles, an eagle glaring out from the back of each hand. 

Hokit, a former NFL player who transitioned to MMA because he “wanted to do a real man’s sport,” has a penchant for answering journalists’ questions in rhymes. This presser was no exception. He aimed his insults at Brazilian fighter Alex “Poatan” Pereira, in an attempt to goad him (and White) into setting up an official bout, now that the former middleweight champion had moved up to Hokit’s weight class. (“Alex gained some weight and now he thinks he’s King Kong / but his girl said the steroids killed his ding dong.”) When a reporter asked Hokit about going face-to-face with Pereira, he escalated: 

I come to devour.
You will know the day, you will know the hour.
I’m gonna give Pereira a golden shower!

(In case anyone missed the subtext, he went on: “I’m not just gonna win. I’m gonna PISS ON HIM.”) But as Pereira, only two seats away, calmly responded to the poem via translator, Hokit seemed to grow more agitated (“He speaks English!”), pointing and yelling at Pereira—and, soon, at a third fighter, Ilia “El Matador” Topuria, for trying to mediate this too-long exchange between two people who weren’t even scheduled to fight each other. In the end, Hokit was thrown out, forcing the press conference to finish less than half an hour after it had started.

The energy was more subdued when the athletes reconvened a month later for the kickoff press conference in front of the Lincoln Memorial, where local children, in UFC Freedom 250 T-shirts, ushered the fighters to their seats and the reporters noticeably avoided asking Hokit questions. The heavyweight, leaning into the caricature of a person with a dissociative disorder à la M. Night Shyamalan’s Split, replaced his cloak with a black suit and a boonie hat and introduced himself as “Josh,” apologizing for the past behavior of the “Incredible Hok.” Josh, who frequently interrupted questions directed at others, was no better than his alter ego. In response to the last question—again, not directed at him—he cut in, ostensibly to apologize, then called Topuria’s ex-wife a “stripper from Miami.” The second his mouth left the microphone, White—whose podium was perfectly situated in front of Abraham Lincoln’s statue—concluded the press conference. 

***

The MMA promotion’s “once-in-a-generation” event promised fighter meet-and-greets, a ceremonial weigh-in, and a live concert featuring a country-rock band. The weekend would end with a seven-bout fight card on the South Lawn, simulcast on Paramount subscribers’ screens across the Americas. Headlining the main card were two championship bouts: for the lightweight title, interim champion¹ Justin “the Human Highlight” Gaethje—who once asked an opponent to break his nose so that the UFC would cover surgery for his deviated septum—ended Topuria’s undefeated streak by technical knockout after the fourth round. The heavyweight interim title, meanwhile, went to Ciryl “Bon Gamin” Gane, who finished Pereira via knockout in the second round. 

Every bout on the main card, save for Gane and Pereira’s, featured an American-born fighter, many of whom had lobbied for an opportunity to fight on June 14, posting Instagram videos and giving podcast interviews about what an honor it would be to represent the country in such a historic event. Notably missing were the UFC greats (and liabilities) Jon Jones—the youngest champion in history, whose near-perfect record shows one loss (for illegal elbows) and one no-contest² (for a doping violation)—and Conor McGregor, who once flew from Dublin to New York to throw a dolly at a bus.

The collaboration had been in the works since at least last July, when, at the kick-off event for America’s yearlong birthday celebration, Trump had first teased the idea. “I even think we’re going to have a UFC fight,” he told the Des Moines crowd, a plan later confirmed by White, as well as by Karoline Leavitt, who claimed the president was “dead serious.” Cue the dream cards and the campaigns. Jones renounced his two-month retirement from the Octagon, and McGregor—who had visited the White House for Saint Patrick’s Day four months prior—announced his return after a five-year hiatus, even claiming he’d signed a contract to fight in what was then being referred to as “UFC White House.” (No one believed him.)

Over the following months, amid escalating military conflicts, details gradually emerged. The date moved up from Independence Day to Flag Day, or the U.S. Army’s birthday, which this year also happened to be a Sunday,³ Trump’s eightieth birthday, and the first day of the G7 Summit. (France ultimately delayed the summit’s schedule by a day to accommodate Trump.) There would be weigh-ins on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial; walkouts from the Oval Office to the Octagon. Renderings showed an outdoor arena on the South Lawn for an exclusive, invite-only crowd of five thousand, and a stadium in the Ellipse for up to eighty-five thousand members of the general public. The total production cost, upward of eight figures, would all be on the UFC’s dime.

White has always cast Trump as a kind of UFC savior. The organization, cofounded in 1993 by the entrepreneur Art Davie and the Brazilian jiujitsu Grand Master Rorion Gracie, changed hands twice within its first decade—a side effect of John McCain’s nationwide campaign to ban what he called “human cockfighting.” Nearly insolvent by 2001, the franchise’s beleaguered owners sold it off to a casino-executive couple and their childhood friend, Dana White. By then, the legal tides were starting to turn: the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board began creating a regulatory framework for the sport, in the process, permitting some fights in-state. One month after the sale, the new owners held their first event, UFC 30, at the only venue willing to host them: the Trump Taj Mahal. To hear White and Trump tell it, the fight launched a decades-long friendship that even survived the latter’s short-lived partnership with a rival MMA promotion. But the truth is that Trump’s casino had already hosted the UFC under its previous ownership, and, according to the former executive James Werme, UFC 30 had been arranged prepurchase. Also: Trump was absent from both events. But the watered-down story—about White’s ingenuity and Trump’s generosity—sounds better than the reality of their transactional partnership and the benefits they’ve stood to gain from it.

President Donald Trump congratulates Kevin Holland after UFC 316 in Newark, New Jersey, June 7, 2025. Official White House photograph by Daniel Torok, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Fast-forward to 2016, during the Republican National Convention, when White extolled the nominee—who would later earn the dubious distinction of becoming the first sitting president to attend a UFC event while being impeached—as a “fighter who will fight for this country.” (Also in 2016: the sale of the UFC to Ari Emanuel, Trump’s former talent agent.) Eight years later, as the crowd celebrated Trump’s second win in Palm Beach, White spoke again. By 2024, the UFC had already elbowed its way into the mainstream, having widened its audience when it became the first professional sports organization to bring back live events during the pandemic. After congratulating the president-elect, White thanked the podcasters who had endorsed Trump during his campaign, including the “mighty and powerful” Joe Rogan, a UFC commentator who—you guessed it—called the fights at UFC Freedom 250. 

White, who has repeatedly denied any political allegiances, has both transformed the UFC into something of a meeting place for Trump and intertwined it inextricably with members of his circle. The former DOGE leader Elon Musk, for example, joined the board of directors of the UFC parent company Endeavor in 2021; that same year, the Oracle CEO Larry Ellison became a shareholder after the company’s IPO. Four years later, Ellison’s son, David, acquired Paramount Global with approval from Trump’s FCC. Then the newly merged Paramount Skydance signed an exclusive, seven-year, $7.7 billion deal with the UFC—a risky break with the pay-per-view model on which the game had always relied. 

Last Thursday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio—who’d attended UFC 327 in April in lieu of attending peace negotiations with Iran—signed, in a televised ceremony, a vague memorandum of understanding with White to “mark a new public-private partnership” to “collaborate on the global growth of mixed martial arts,” indicating that perhaps this will not be the last time we’ll see the Claw at the White House. Two days later, the UFC commentator Daniel Cormier posted, then deleted, screenshots of direct messages from Donald Trump Jr., who had asked him for insider betting information—namely, whom he was rooting for and which fighters had injuries. (“I’ll cut to the chase,” he allegedly wrote. “Are any of the fights tomorrow rigged?”) The son of the president later denied having ever contacted Cormier. 

UFC Freedom 250 was a spectacle—a “gimmick,” as Trump called it—that gave two showmen the opportunity to publicly flex their might and turn a profit while doing so; one need only look at the UFC and the Trump Organization’s websites, where you can purchase a gold medallion featuring Trump’s profile or bid on the name card Hokit used in the very press conference from which he was thrown out. But commemorative memorabilia aside, all of this peddling and pontificating about the UFC’s value would be for naught if Trump had no real skin in the game. Three months ago, as he talked up UFC Freedom 250, the president reportedly purchased “between $15,001 and $50,000” worth of stock in TKO Group Holdings, the parent company of Zuffa Boxing, the WWE, and, of course, the UFC.

[1] An interim champion is the temporary champion for a weight class when its current champion is presently unable to participate in a title bout. The two champions then face off in a “unification bout,” which determines the true, undisputed champion for their weight class. If, due to injury, inactivity, or an internal conflict with the promotion’s leadership, a unification bout can’t be produced, the inactive fighter will be stripped of their title and the active fighter will be promoted. 

[2] A no-contest decision is a bout result that occurs due to an unforeseen circumstance—like a debilitating eye poke early in the bout, or, in Jones’s case, misconduct discovered after he had already won the bout. It counts as neither a win nor a loss in the fighter’s record. It also has its own category; Jones’s record, with twenty-eight wins, one loss, and one NC, is 28-1-1.

[3] All U.S.-based UFC events happen on Saturday evenings, with the main card of the UFC numbered events (previously pay-per-view) usually going live at 9 P.M. EST, ending at 1 A.M. the following morning. White, who has compared the UFC to the NFL, predicted “Super Bowl–type numbers” for UFC Freedom 250. According to White, the event, which unlike the Super Bowl was not available to watch on cable television—and which ended at 1 A.M. Monday morning—“exceeded” all broadcasting expectations.