UFC White House Features One Loser Too Many
TKO's decision to tie themselves to Trump is aging like milk
The only reputation that’s taken a bigger beating this week than TKO’s UFC is Donald Trump’s.
In both cases, the initial, devastating blows were largely self-inflicted, but a lot of former friends have jumped in to kick them while they’re down.
Trump Is Not Going to Get More Popular By June
I’m not going to pull a Dana White and make this post all about politics, but I do want to mention that Trump’s Operation Epstein Fury is NOT at all popular with the UFC’s key Gen Z male demographic:
Some quotes, from Puck:
Back in late 2024, when I was touring college campuses and interviewing students about the election, a topic rarely discussed in Washington kept popping up in my conversations. Young men were telling me, over and over again, that they were worried about being drafted into war. “I’m voting for Donald Trump,” Mike Mezza, a senior at Penn State, told me that November. “It’s the rising threat of rising global conflict. As somebody who is a military-age male, that thought is scary.”
…
This week, I got my hands on a pair of large-scale qualitative surveys of young men, conducted using a groundbreaking new A.I. research platform—focus groups of dudes talking about the war, basically—showing that even young Trump voters are furious with the president for attacking Iran and breaking his promise to avoid foreign wars.…
A common sentiment surfaced across candid interviews with 55 young American men between the ages of 18 and 29, of all races and political backgrounds, some Trump voters and some not: Young people aren’t processing Iran as foreign policy. … They’re experiencing one reality. A government that has billions for bombs and nothing for their rent. Every dollar spent on the war registers as a dollar not spent on them. Trump’s “no new wars” promise was the clearest, most testable commitment he made to young voters. Its violation is now the anchor story for a broader trust collapse.
Maybe the research is wrong, but even Joe Rogan has figured out that there are some drawbacks to the whole UFC White House concept taking place during wartime:
Joe Rogan: “I know it's going to be very high security and high stress and weird to have a fight at the White House in the middle of a fucking war. I would hope the war would be sorted out by June, but quite honestly I’m not confident that’s gonna be the case. That’ll be weird, having this very high profile event where everybody’s in one place at one time. Seems like you’re asking for… yeah.”
Has TKO Become Part of the Trump Administration?
Two other pieces of news this week tied the TKO UFC even tighter to the UFC.
First, the news that former MMA fighter (and US Senator from Oklahoma) Markwayne Mullin would be replacing Kristi Noem as head of the Department of Homeland Security.
Mullin’s long-standing beef with UFC frontman Dana White might be the only war that POTUS Trump has actually brought to an end.
Here’s what Mullin said about the UFC to the Financial Times in 2022:
White is being pressured by congressman Markwayne Mullin, who is likely to become a US senator next year. The Oklahoma Republican is a former MMA fighter who turned down appearing on The Ultimate Fighter when the UFC said he couldn’t make any outside calls during six weeks of filming, not even to run his plumbing company. He’s introduced a bill that would extend the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act to mixed martial arts. It would require an outside body to rank fighters, regardless of whether they were in the UFC or one of the much smaller MMA leagues. Top-ranked fighters would have to fight regardless of which league they joined, leading to more competition. Mullin believes that the UFC’s claim that fighters are independent contractors and not employees won’t hold up in court: “I’m a plumbing contractor, so I understand these contracts a little bit. If 100 per cent of your money is being earned by one place, you’re not a subcontractor.”
The other piece of news was something we predicted as soon as Trump was re-elected.
From Uncrowned, “Several current and former UFC fighters will host the seminar March 14 and 15 at the FBI Special Agent Academy in Quantico, Va. The sessions will be exclusive for academy students and senior FBI staff.”
In combination, all these news events are chaining TKO’s UFC to Donald Trump. Check out how relative sports normies like the crew at Pablo Torre Finds Out view all this:
Tim Miller: Really we’re going to have an MMA fight to celebrate (America’s) 250 and it is Idiocracy. You know Mike Judge did have a crystal ball. It’s worth paying attention to because MMA culture is very wrapped up in this administration, right? And like that whole mindset is and you know Dana White spoke at the convention. All those guys go to MMA fights like Kash Patel and Marco (Rubio) and Trump and all these guys sit ringside in their in their suits. They think it gives them an aura of toughness, right? They really care a lot about seeming strong and I think that’s kind of the political side of it.
It’s not just Trump’s declining domestic popularity that is dragging down the TKO UFC brand; there’s a geopolitical reality being triggered by Trump’s actions as POTUS.
Trump Isn’t the Only Bad TKO Bet That’s Coming Due
As we’ve posted many times, TKO has been all-in on the Arab Gulf States for years.
The Zuffa Boxing partnership (owned 60% by a Saudi corporation) is just the most recent example.
But it all started with Zuffa’s alliance with the United Arab Emirates many years ago when the Fertittas sold 10% of the UFC to UAE-owned Flash Entertainment.
More recently, TKO boss of bosses Ari Emanuel and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner allegedly helped Paramount secure billions of dollars from Qatar, the UAE, and the Saudis to buy WBD.
But like I warned last week when Trump and Israel elected to attack Iran, those Gulf State dictatorships are unlikely to be providing much financial backing to TKO anytime soon.
Let’s check in on how that’s going:
And for you smart-asses who know the Daily Mail is a terrible rag, here’s the UK’s leading business newspaper warning everyone that any deal with the Gulf States is written on sand:
Pressure on the Gulf states’ budgets could cause them to review their overseas investments and future commitments as they consider options to ease the financial strain caused by the US-Israeli war against Iran. A Gulf official said it could have an impact on anything from investment pledges to foreign states or companies, sports sponsorships, contracts with businesses and investors, or sales of holdings.
Enough War & Politics, Why Did the UFC White House Card Flop So Hard?
After months of hype and build-up that included POTUS Donald Trump claiming the card would feature eight or nine title fights, the fans and pundits were massively let down when the UFC finally announced the card, and here it is:
The reaction of the most passionate UFC fan I know went like this:
A round-up of how UFC veterans and pundits reacted to the card:
Ronda Rousey says Dana White ‘knows the White House card sucks’
Colby Covington ‘bummed’ about snub from ‘piss-poor’ UFC Freedom 250 card
Is UFC White House lineup a dud? MMA Fighting
Jeff Wagenheim of ESPN summed up the biggest problems with the card:
When your biggest star is a guy who hasn't fought in five years (Conor McGregor), your second biggest is coming out of retirement in a different promotion (Ronda Rousey) and your third biggest is someone the boss doesn't trust to headline this White House show (Jon Jones), you're not ready to penetrate the mainstream. There are many immensely talented fighters in the UFC, some of whom are on this card, but the general sports public knows practically none of them.
Chuck Mindenhall blames something else: poor fight quality:
It also comes down to these cards themselves. These prelims that we’re just constantly like, ‘Wow, that was pretty bad.’
There’s probably a lot of people on roster at this point that shouldn’t be on the UFC roster. (Fans are) watching a lot of bad MMA and that used to be relegated to the other leagues. That wasn’t the UFC and unfortunately I think the UFC is kind of dealing with that now.
Ronda Rousey had a lot more to say
Ronda, once Dana White’s very personal favorite fighter, tore into TKO’s UFC at the presser, announcing her Netflix bout against Gina Carano:
“I knew that we could promote this on our own and that would probably be the most lucrative way to go about it for us. But I have such love and respect for Dana that I wanted to bring this to him first. I said, ‘I can do this on my own, but I’d rather fight for you than fight for me. Just make it make sense for me.’ And originally we were going to do it New Year’s, and it was going to be the last fight under [UFC’s] pay-per-view model, and he offered me the best pay-per-view structure ever, and I was so grateful. But then Gina said she needed more time to get in the best shape possible, and that she wanted me to fight the best version of herself. I think that was fate. It was meant to be, and [that] pushed us to the other side.
“Once [UFC] moved into the streaming model [with new broadcast partner Paramount], it’s just not about putting on the best fights possible anymore. Dana is legally beholden to the shareholders and to maximize shareholder value. Unfortunately, now that they’ve taken the reins of the company away from [White], it’s barely recognizable now.
“They need to be saved from themselves, and luckily I’m here to be their hero.”
It’s a Money Deal
Turns out there’s a likely explanation for why the UFC White House card over-promised and under-delivered so badly: they overspent, and the slush-fund they were possibly hoping to feast on didn’t come together as expected.
Here’s TKO Group Holdings value extractor in chief President and Chief Operating Officer Mark Shapiro explaining that first part on TKO’s most recent quarterly earnings call:
“At the moment, the UFC event at the White House is slated to cost upwards of $60 million,” Shapiro said during quarter financial call on Wednesday. “I think by the time all is said and done with the event and what we pay the fighters and the fan fest that we’re going to have, that could move north. It’s definitely not moving south. It could move north. Bottom line, it’s still a moving target.
“We are working to determine, on a parallel track, a package of inventory in and around the weekend of events we can monetize, primarily with corporate partners. [Business to business] players that will offset half of the spend. Even if that $60 [million] goes up or rides up on us, we believe we can offset half of the spend. Today, we see as $60 [million], offsetting $30 [million]. Now I would mention we have several current and prospective partners that are pursuing multi-year partnerships with TKO assets that likely will be inclusive of the White House event. We have a lot of current and prospective partners that would like to be involved and inquiring about inventory as part of their greater partnership deals they either already have or are negotiating with us for the future.”
Perhaps money is not what they initially expected because Trump’s America 250 fund failed to secure the $100 million it requested from Congress to celebrate the country’s 250th birthday.
We reported on the fund at the time, when optimism (and Trump’s polling numbers) were running high, and published their funding request:
“As we approach 2026, America250 will need Congress’s ongoing commitment to help create the enthusiasm and momentum required across all corners of our nation to execute a 250th anniversary worthy of the American people. With two more fiscal years left, we are scaling our latest appropriations request to $100 million to align with our ambitious programming.”
Which has led Zach Arnold to ask a key question:
Did TKO get into the UFC White House deal at a time when they were optimistic that there would be an ample pile of taxpayer money to defray the production costs?
More importantly, did both the Trump White House and UFC misjudge their popularity in 2026 with fat-cat political donors wanting to celebrate America with cage fighting?
Or is it just that UFC no longer has any idea how to put on an epic fight card?
Nate Wilcox founded Bloody Elbow in 2007 and sold it in 2024. He is the Editor-in-Chief of The MMA Draw.
At least UFC saved Khamzat Chimaev vs. Sean Strickland and Bobby Green vs. Jeremy Stephens for Newark.
TKO and the Ellisons are paying the price of going all in with Trump. I love it.