Earlier this month UFC president Dana White and interim welterweight champion Colby Covington visited the White House and met with Donald Trump.



Within a matter of hours, photographs showing White alongside a beaming Trump in the Oval Office began to circulate on social media. Trump’s meeting with White and Covington highlights a longstanding and friendly relationship between the UFC and the current administration. It also makes the case for why the UFC is a perfect platform for Trump’s politics.

The first significant contact between the UFC and Trump occurred in 2001. At the time, the promotion was seen as illegitimate and had been relegated to small venues in Mississippi and Louisiana. Arizona senator John McCain reflected the feeling of many politicians in 1996 when he referred to MMA as “human cockfighting,” a comment that tarnished the UFC’s reputation. At its nadir, mixed martial arts (and by extension UFC) was banned in 36 states and from pay-per-view – a major source of revenue – and the promotion was desperate to build new relationships at the turn of the millennium. Enter Donald Trump. He was the first businessman to take a chance on the promotion, and allowed White to showcase UFC 31 and 32 at the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort in Atlantic City at the start of 2001 (UFC 28 had also taken place at the venue but was under different ownership at the time).

The Atlantic City events were an immediate success, and allowed the UFC to reestablish legitimacy under new leadership. By late 2001, they began hosting events in Las Vegas, which would later become the promotion’s home. While the UFC’s business relationship with Trump had already come to an end, White was always quick to compliment the billionaire mogul turned president.

“When we first bought this company, no venues would even take us,” White said at a UFC 53 press conference in Atlantic City four years later. “Donald Trump was the first guy to say, ‘We’ll do the fights here.’ Trump gave us our first shot over at [Taj Mahal], and then when we left and went to a bigger arena at the Meadowlands, he was one of the first guys there in his seat.”

White’s loyalty towards Trump continued. In 2016, White stood in front of the Republican National Convention and praised Trump in a bombastic speech before endorsing his run for president. Over the course of four minutes, White spoke of Trump as a “fighter and I know he will fight for this country.” He repeatedly praised the candidate’s business savvy and rehashed the tale of Trump’s magnanimous support for the UFC during the promotion’s dark age.

While notable combat sports figures – including former UFC champions Miesha Tate, Tito Ortiz, and Chris Weidman have backed Trump – White’s brash support raises questions about the UFC’s politics as a whole. His defence of Trump’s actions — many of which are racially charged — can be seen as an extension of the UFC’s continued support of the president.

“[Trump] is one of those guys that if he was sitting in this room and we were hanging out, he would completely change your opinion about him. I don’t agree with everything he says and I think some of the things that he does say isn’t exactly what he means. ‘Let’s build a wall’ and all this stuff – what he’s really saying is all these people coming from different countries need to do it the old school way,” White told UFC Unfiltered in 2016. “You register and you get your paperwork done. He is talking about people that are sneaking into the country. It is like when he gets in front of the camera, he gets a little too hyped up.”

White’s defence of Trump’s policies continues well past the billionaire’s election as president. When Trump mounted an attack on Colin Kaepernick for the football player’s decision to kneel during the Star-Spangled Banner, White stated that he believes in “standing for the national anthem.”

The UFC president is not the only executive who has a pre-existing relationship with Trump. Ari Emanuel, a Hollywood powerbroker whose WME-IMG company (renamed Endeavor) purchased the UFC for $4.2bn in 2016, was Trump’s agent when the billionaire starred in The Apprentice. He has also done business with Trump, as WME-IMG purchased the Miss Universe Pageant from him in 2015. The incumbent president also told The Hollywood Reporter in 2016 that Emanuel was a “very good friend of mine.”

Shortly following Trump’s election in November 2016, Emanuel met with the president-elect at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, emphasizing the continued relationship between the former associates. Incidentally, Trump also has a history with Ari Emanuel’s older brother Rahm, Barack Obama’s former chief of staff, who later became the mayor of Chicago. Trump reportedly contributed $50,000 to Emanuel’s mayoral campaign in 2010 in spite of the fact that Emanuel ran as a Democrat.

Given the UFC’s close ties to the current administration, it comes as little surprise that Trump laid out the red carpet for White upon his arrival at the White House. After the formal meeting and photo op with the president in the Oval Office, White described the treatment he received later that evening.

“I went back to the hotel, picked up my wife, and we came back and had dinner with the president in the residence,” White said. “We had dinner for three hours, and then he personally toured my wife and I around the White House.”

In many ways, the UFC is the perfect sports stage for Trump to promote his political platform with minimal resistance – there are no kneeling fighters, White House boycotts or stars like LeBron James calling him out (Ronda Rousey was critical of Trump but has now left for a career in wrestling).

During a recent interview, White revealed that the UFC is planning a series of documentaries to celebrate the promotion’s 25th anniversary. One of the those documentaries will focus on Trump’s history with the promotion, which was part of the reason for his visit to the White House: “[Trump] and I went to the residence after that, and he and I both shot for the documentary,” said White.

Trump’s photo op with a UFC executive and interim champion continues a long line of UFC figures who have posed alongside controversial politicians and world leaders. For instance, former two-division champion Conor McGregor met with Vladimir Putin during the World Cup. Other examples include UFC welterweight Abu Azaitar meeting with King Mohammed VI of Morocco in 2017 and former UFC champions Fabricio Werdum, Frank Mir, Chris Weidman and Frankie Edgar meeting with Chechen dictator Ramzan Kadyrov.

This trend emphasizes the importance of athletes in bolstering politicians’ image and legitimizing their respective rules. In Trump’s case, the support of a sports organization, its executives, and a handful of its athletes helps enhance his image, cement his popularity, and promote his policies across an entirely different platform.