The most audacious media spectacle in recent memory was hatched on the floor of Madison Square Garden, less than two weeks after the 2024 presidential election.
On Nov. 16, 2024, President-elect Donald Trump walked into New York’s most famous arena to loud applause from a friendly crowd, as Kid Rock’s “American Bad Ass” played.
Trump was there for UFC 309, and he was joined by Rock, Elon Musk, and incoming cabinet secretaries Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, among other dignitaries. But when he walked out, he did so alongside Dana White, the CEO of UFC.
Amid the fights, Trump took a moment to make a suggestion to White, a longtime personal friend dating back to the early days of UFC.
“He leaned over to me and says, ‘we should do a fight at the White House,’” White recalls in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “I said ‘yes, we should.’ I didn’t know what he meant … I was thinking maybe there’s some room that he’s thinking about where we’d have it. He’s like, ‘no, we’re gonna do it outside on the South Lawn.’”
