How the UFC Went from ‘Human Cockfighting’ to the White House Lawn

The Ultimate Fighting Championship’s event on the South Lawn of the White House Sunday has been billed as a red-blooded celebration of both the country’s 250th anniversary and President Donald Trump’s 80th birthday. It’s also a triumph for a company once considered a pariah in the American sports landscape.

Just three decades ago, the UFC launched early events with few rules, no weight classes and no judges, as mixed martial arts earned a reputation as a barbaric blood sport. Arizona Senator John McCain called it “human cockfighting,” and pushed a national campaign that eventually led to it being banned in 36 states.

UFC co-founder Campbell McLaren recalls an event in Charlotte, North Carolina, in April 1995 in which a burly police officer with a peaked cap approached him and issued a stern warning.

“If you come back, I will arrest you and keep you in jail until I find a charge that sticks,” McLaren remembers the cop telling him.

Flash forward three decades, and many Republican politicians and elites, once thorns in the UFC’s side, have been angling to secure limited tickets to the White House event.

“This 33-year -arc, to me, is unbelievably fascinating and represents a real change in American culture, both American psychology and politics,” McLaren said. “To go from being attacked by every serious politician in the country to being on the White House lawn is pretty interesting.”

Campbell McLaren poses with the Mariachi Lindas Mexicanas at an MMA Extravaganza in 2019. Art Garcia/Sipa USA via AP

Trump, of course, is a central figure in the sport’s transformation from societal outcast to multi-billion- dollar global juggernaut. The president has said he gave the UFC got a fortuitous boost in early 2001 when it held two events at Trump’s Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City — forging an eventual bond between Trump and UFC President Dana White, a former fight manager from Massachusetts who had bought into the nearly bankrupt company that year, that has remained influential to this day.

“Nobody took us seriously,” White said in his endorsement speech of Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention. “Nobody but Donald Trump.”

In the decade since, Trump has worked closely with the UFC to help him project an ultramasculine image, energizing his base and connecting with young male voters through regular appearances at fights, where he often receives a grand walk-out introduction while Kid Rock’s “American Bad Ass” blares on arena speakers.

Yet for some invested in the sport who have not aligned with the UFC’s Trumpian shift — including Democratic politicians, disgruntled fighters, left-leaning fans and progressive gym owners — the White House event is more dystopian than celebratory. Longtime fighter Brandon Royval said on a podcast that he didn’t want to “fight for a bunch of billionaires and rich people that couldn’t give less of a shit about me.” Benson Henderson, a former UFC champion, called the event a “clown show.” Fight organizers have struggled to convince A-list celebrities to attend, according to a report in Vanity Fair.

“There is something to be said for the distance that the sport has covered from the beginning,” said Luke Thomas, a longtime MMA analyst and journalist. “However, the final turn of the screw that gets you on the White House lawn is a nakedly partisan turn that is alienating to — well, I wouldn’t even call them fans anymore. Most of the people who were around when this turn was in motion have all left.”

Trump has long used the UFC to burnish his own image, especially during times of political turbulence. But the UFC’s embrace of Trump stands in stark contrast to its competitors in the American sports marketplace.

President Trump and Hunter Campbell, chief business officer of the UFC, attend a fight in Miami earlier this year. Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

While most American professional sports leagues aim to remain apolitical to avoid alienating customers, the UFC has doubled down on its relationship with Trump. Even as Trump tried to launch his own company to rival the UFC — in 2008, he partnered with the apparel brand Affliction to host two pay-per-view events, but the venture folded due to heavy financial losses — he and White remained close.

White has often said that his affiliation with Trump is based on their personal relationship rather than political ideology, and he doesn’t care if the UFC’s ties to Trump might harm the business. But while the UFC’s relationship with the president has alienated some fans, it hasn’t held up other lucrative opportunities. Last year, TKO Holdings Group, which owns the UFC, shifted the company away from pay-per-views when it signed a $7.7 billion deal with Paramount to stream all of the promotion’s fights. The deal came at a time when the UFC’s relationship with Trump had arguably never been more transactional, and it signaled another unprecedented step in the organization’s rise in American professional sports.

“The NFL, NBA, Major League Baseball … they walk a fine line. They do not want to offend; they are trying to peel back as wide of a net as possible. Combat sports have always been a niche sport, and so narrowing [the fan base] doesn’t hurt you as much,” said John S. Nash, who’s covered the business of combat sports for nearly two decades. “I don’t think there’s been a sport, in my lifetime at least, that has so openly, blatantly served as kind of a campaign arm to a president and then got direct quid pro quo payment for that service.”

The affiliation with Trump hasn’t been celebrated by all longtime fans, however. Josh Peters, a mixed martial artist from Maryland, grew up watching MMA films, dreaming of following in his favorite fighter’s footsteps. He eventually decided to open his own MMA gym and steadily grew Combat Principles Mixed Martial Arts in Burtsonville, Maryland, into one of the most recognized training centers on the East Coast.

But he has become disillusioned with the sport’s relationship with Trump and opted not to remain quiet. When a trainer he had worked with at the gym livestreamed himself at the Capitol during the Jan. 6 riots, Peters cut ties. In 2022, he entered one of his fighters in a tournament in Florida; when he learned that the event was sponsored by the Conservative Political Action Conference and that several Trump associates would be in attendance, he plastered Planned Parenthood information on his fighter’s walk-out banner and absorbed obscenities from the crowd.

This past year, Peters decided to run for a council seat in Anne Arundel County and centered much of his message on his experience as a mixed martial artist, even though he knew his politics might not resonate with the sport’s entrenched right-wing base. “I still love the sport of MMA,” he said. “But I hate the industry of it.”

The industry of the UFC is churning. It will cost upward of $60 million to host the White House fights, all of which will reportedly be absorbed by TKO Holdings Group. But that bill, with projected losses of about $30 million, doesn’t account for the exposure the White House event will bring, helping the company promote its brand and bring in sponsors.

During a quarterly earnings call last month, TKO Group Holdings president and CEO Mark Shapiro made it clear the event was about the future.

“This is an investment for the long term,” Shapiro said.

It’s also a very long way from the sport’s humble beginnings. On the eve of its very first event in November 1993, participants gathered in a hotel ballroom in Denver, Colorado, to discuss the specifics of the event. The meeting devolved into chaos. Fighters argued with one another over potential rules and fired questions at fight officials. Were hands to be taped? Could shoes be worn? What about knee pads and mouthpieces? There was little agreement on anything, and most wondered if the fights were going to happen at all.

Teila Tuli, a 410-pound sumo wrestler, finally stood up and slammed his signed contract on a table. Tuli told everyone he had come to fight, and soon each fighter followed his lead. What happened the next evening has become lore: Just 26 seconds into the promotion’s first bout, Tuli took a roundhouse kick to the mouth, launching his tooth out of the caged ring and toward the crowd.

“I was literally awestruck,” McLaren said, “because it had taken a lot of cajoling, a lot of convincing, a lot of politicking, to get this off the ground.”