The Daily - Dana White, Donald Trump and the Rise of Cage-Match Politics

Episode Date: January 2, 2025

Warning: this episode contains strong language.Over the past five years, one sports league has gained popularity faster than any other: Ultimate Fighting Championship, or U.F.C.Matt Flegenheimer, a correspondent for The Times, discusses the man behind the league and how his longtime friendship with President-elect Donald J. Trump has transformed what once was a fringe sport into a culture and political powerhouse.Guest: Matt Flegenheimer, a correspondent at The New York Times who focuses on in-depth profiles of powerful figures.Background reading: Dana White, the U.F.C.’s chief executive, has shot to the peak of Trump-era culture and political influence. What does he want?For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Hey, it's Sabrina. Before we get started, a few details about a major developing story that's still being pieced together. According to investigators, in the early hours of Wednesday morning, an armed man driving a rented pickup truck deliberately plowed into a crowd celebrating New Year's Eve in New Orleans, killing at least 15 people and injuring dozens more. In a short speech last night, President Biden said that the driver, a US Army veteran who died during the attack, had been inspired by the Islamic State,

and had expressed a clear desire to kill. Investigators said that they are still trying to determine whether he had acted alone or had any help from individuals or a group. These are the key facts we know for now. We'll be following developments over the next few hours, and we'll bring them to you as soon as we can. Okay, here's today's show. This is Daily Producer Olivia Natt.

I am in Las Vegas outside an arena where tonight there is going to be a UFC championship fight. I am notoriously squeamish so I'm really excited to talk to people about why they like this sport, why they're here tonight, and I'm gonna go talk to some of them. It is a microphone. Do you have a couple of minutes to answer some questions? Oh hell yeah! Yeah, let's get some questions going! Let's get some questions going! Why are you guys here tonight? What do you like about watching fights?

The combat is... Ooh! I love it. Like you never know, it's two men in a cage. It's man versus man. Beast versus beast! I really enjoy the special moments where people like, get knocked out.

It's live action. It lets you know who you are. I've never been to a fight before. What should I expect tonight? You gonna go? Nice. I expect somebody's gonna get knocked out, choked out. Anything can happen in this octagon.

You will enjoy this, I promise you. You will enjoy this, I promise you. You will enjoy this. You will. From the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily. Alright, I'm walking over to the Octagon, and it sounds like

the first fights have just kicked off. Kick his fucking ass! Come on, baby, you can do it! stuff. Over the past five years, one sports league has gained popularity faster than any other. The Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC. Today, my colleague Matt Flegenheimer, on the man behind the league, and how his longtime friendship with Donald Trump has transformed what was once a fringe sport

into a cultural and political powerhouse. It's Thursday, January 2nd. Let's go! Matt Flagenheimer. Sabrina Tavernese. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. So, Matt, we're gonna talk today about UFC. But I have something to admit to you.

By all means. I've actually never watched it. Mm-hmm. So let's start with the basics, Matt. Tell us what the UFC is. Sure. UFC stands for Ultimate Fighting Championship. It's the sort of primary promotion associated with mixed martial arts. It is a cage fighting enterprise, which combines elements of kickboxing, wrestling, jujitsu into this kind of very painful medley of activities in what they call the octagon, this eight-sided cage where two fighters convene and beat each other up over a course of rounds. Okay that probably explains why I've never heard of it. It also has been one of the fastest growing sports, huge audience internationally, was acquired for $4 billion

in 2016, has only grown since not just in the sports world, but culturally and politically as well, and really has a kind of crowning moment in November. And what happens in November? So President-elect Trump, really fresh off his election win, attends a fight at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Trump is sort of waiting in the wings with his entourage and walks out almost as if he is the fighter. President and CEO of the UFC, Dana White is to his left, Elon Musk is with him, 47th President-elect Donald Trump.

President and CEO of the UFC, Dana White is to his left, Elon Musk is with him, Mike Johnson is with him. Robert Kennedy alongside. Various cabinet members to be if he has his way. So loud in here. It is so loud. And the crowd just loses its mind. It's always loud when he comes here, but now that he's won,

now that he's the president again, oh my God. And Trump is taking this all in. This is obviously a very friendly room for him. And he has chosen this as a major post-election victory lap space. And he got the reception that he wanted. We're going to leave the greatest comeback in American history under Donald Trump's leadership.

So they're showing this video on the Jumbotron above the octagon, showing various triumphant moments for the president-elect. God spared my life for a reason. And as the video ends, you see the number 45 flash across the screen, and then it moves to 47, showing his presidency and his presidency to be. Okay, so this is an extraordinary scene. And I want you to tell me, Matt, how we got here. Like, how did Trump choose a UFC fight

for his coming out party as president-elect? You know, I think it's actually a pretty natural choice for Trump if you think about the arc of Trump and the UFC across really 20 plus years at this point. And that arc begins with Dana White. White has been a close friend and ally of Trump's and they've kind of risen in parallel and have kind of developed an understanding, not just as people who are in business, who are transactional, but I beyond that, there's a sort of visceral understanding mutually about what it means to succeed in this American moment without having kind of establishment forces behind you every step of the way.

I think White understands that about Trump, but I think Trump understands that about White. Okay, so tell me about Dana White. So he's from Boston, he sort of bounces around in his youth, he's kind of a serial scflaw by his own account. He's a hotel bellman for a bit, trains to be a boxer, becomes a boxing trainer, winds up moving to Vegas, continues training and eventually managing fighters, and really becomes sort of enthralled with the UFC.

And this is the sort of mid to late 1990s, It's a moment where the UFC is very much on the fringe It is a young fledgling league with a quite bad reputation across a lot of the American mainstream We're live from the mile-high city of Denver, Colorado Eight of the deadliest fighters in the world will meet in a no holds barred combat And as a viewing experience the sort of production values were low. The venues were pretty grungy. This was not Saturday night at Madison Square Garden be forewarned, there are no rules, no judges scores. The UFC's own tagline for a time was, there are no rules. That was sort of the pitch.

So really bloody. Bloody and lawless. Eight street tough warriors wage combat in a battle where anything can happen and probably will. John McCain calls it human cockfighting. States are banning it by the dozen. Venues don't want to host fights. But despite all of that, you know, Dane White really sees some potential in the UFC.

And he sees a sort of appetite in the American audience and beyond for a level of violence through sports that I think the expectation was prior to that maybe people didn't quite have the stomach for. Okay, so he sees a path to it despite the fact that people like John McCain say it's human cockfighting and states are banning it. Yeah, I think to White this is an opportunity. So what he does is talks to a couple of high school buddies from a family of casino operators and convinces them to put up two million dollars to buy the

UFC at this moment when it's certainly not a premium property and to put him in charge and give him a stake and Really let him kind of execute the vision that he has for what the sport can become So what happens given that no one really wants to host the thing? They find someone who does want to host the thing, or is at least willing. Welcome to magnificent Atlantic City, New Jersey. Somebody with a long history of hosting fights, at least boxing.

The spectacular Trump Taj Mahal. And that is the future president and president-elect, Donald Trump. Gathered here in this building, here tonight, some of the greatest Y2K gladiators in the world set... In February 2001, at a moment when, as White would say later, nobody was taking them seriously, Donald Trump took them seriously.

So in this grand love story of Dana White and Donald Trump, this fight in Atlantic City is really the meet-cute moment. This is the moment. And obviously, White was grateful to be hosted by Trump, to have the sort of legitimacy that came with having a major fight night at a Trump venue at that time. With that said, this is not an overnight success by any stretch. They're losing money. It's not taking off in any kind of rocket ship way.

But you can see some sort of early signs that Trump and White understand each other. Trump invites one of the fighters onto the Celebrity Apprentice for a season. And reality TV really plays a substantial role in the UFC's arc. ["The Ultimate Fighter"] On this season of The Ultimate Fighter.

In 2005, there's a reality show, The Ultimate Fighter, that debuts. Do you want to be a fighter? That's the question. That's why I'm here. It's not about living in a f***ing house. It debuts. Do you want to be a fighter? That's the question. That's why I'm here. It's not about living in a f***ing house. It's about do you want to be a fighter? And only you know that. It really helps drive interest and complete the picture of these fighters for viewers.

They get attached to these sort of biographies, these compelling stories. Apparently Diego Sanchez is doing some kind of yoga bodybuilding pose down with baby oil all over his body. That's just not my style. And it does really help the fights themselves get a sort of wider audience and gain more traction. So you want to be an ultimate fighter? Five seconds. What a finish. To such an extent as the UFC grows that Trump gets a little jealous.

What did he do? So in 2008, Trump announces he's investing in his own rival, Mixed Martial Arts Enterprise. And he's trying to sort of harness some of the energy that the UFC is clearly channeling. But his group is not long for this world and his operation collapses pretty quickly. But it's really a testament to the Trump-White friendship. The two of them are not necessarily the type to take kindly to business threats in their respective fields. And they stay on very good terms here. And in 2011, the UFC signs a big TV contract.

Trump sees an article about it, takes it, writes a message on it, and sends it to White saying congratulations, I always knew you were going to do it. Like he's a proud mom or something. And sort of, you know, it's both a compliment and self-regarding about his own instincts that Trump saw it coming as well. He spotted it too. They spotted it together. Okay, so clearly these two have a lot in common, right?

They're businessmen, they both have this reality TV thing, they both see the potential in this very violent sport. What about their politics? You know, in some ways, they approach politics from kind of a similar vantage point, if you think about Trump before he was president. It's very transactional, not ideological. You know, frankly, as the commissioner of a league that's trying to appeal to as many people as possible, in general, those sorts of figures wouldn't necessarily want to engage

in partisan politics because the country is pretty evenly split and you're trying to cast a wide net. You would alienate half your audience. Sure. But then Trump runs for office in 2016 and he has a request when he becomes the Republican nominee, which is that Dana White speak at his convention that summer, which obviously would place him very much in the middle of partisan politics in a way that had not been a part of his profile previously.

He has said he was advised against doing it for all the reasons you would expect that it would alienate potential sponsors, it would alienate fans. So it was kind of high stakes for him because potentially it could alienate half his audience. Sure, but he does speak of that convention. What's up, GOP? And White himself leaned into the idea that it was sort of strange that he was there. I'm sure most of you are wondering, what are you doing here? You're probably wondering, what are you doing here? It was kind of his opening. And I wanted to show up and tell you about my friend, Donald Trump.

The Donald Trump that I know. And he talked about the chance that Trump took on him in the UFC in 2001, his loyalty, his fighter instincts. He was the sort of validating voice that Trump wanted to have in that moment. Let me tell you something. I've been in the fight business my whole life. I know fighters.

Ladies and gentlemen, Donald Trump is a fighter, and I know he will fight for this country. So what's the effect of all of this? Like, does it actually have repercussions on his business? The sky doesn't fall, right? And I think that's an important lesson that he learns in that moment. He goes out on this limb, he's advised against doing something, much in the way that he was, in his telling, advised against giving it all to the UFC at the beginning.

In this case, Dane White gives the speech at the RNC. It goes fine. And as a matter of fact, Trump's elected president. And now he knows the president. Right. So the lesson is, go with your gut. Trust your gut. And I think the lesson was that Dana White believed then and believes now that he knows his audience better than anyone. And to him, that audience respects somebody who will do what he believes in, or at least project that he is doing what he believes in. He has been somebody with an antenna for this stuff, and for knowing where his audience would be across the decades.

This part is on ground. It's a UFC walkthrough play. If you're in section 11, that'll be on your left. Section 12 will be on your right. Do you follow Dana White at all? Oh, hell yeah. I love Dana White. What do you love about him? The fact that the man took over the sport when everyone thought it was going to go downhill. You know, some people, rich rich famous people are at a certain level

they're they're a higher class they look down on people he's like in it so he knows what real people want. I feel like UFC really allows people to speak their minds and I know Uncle Dana kind of allows that. He's the GOAT. How's that? He's the GOAT. Okay, end of round one. Going into round two. We'll be right back.

Okay, so White backs Trump. And as you said, the sky doesn't fall. And in fact, it boosts his status and his league status. What's the next thing he does that really propels this league? Well, it comes during a pretty dark time across the sports landscape and otherwise, and it's COVID. Obviously, sports are sort of shut down across the board. People are thirsting for any kind of content of any sort.

Right, because remember, it was COVID, everything shut down. NBA stopped playing. NBA stopped playing, and there is this real appetite to get something fresh and live on the air. And Dana White sees an opportunity. He's trying to find workarounds, and he finds it in Florida, an empty arena in Jacksonville. The UFC becomes the first major American pro sporting event in the COVID age to reopen. And certainly the expert consensus and the an empty arena in Jacksonville. The UFC becomes the first major American pro-sporting event in the COVID age to reopen. And certainly the expert consensus and the medical consensus was that this was not necessarily a fantastic idea.

He is sort of bulldozing through that concern. And it was a moment when obviously the sports landscape was barren. He had a pretty captive audience and it was really a showcase opportunity for the UFC. So in part it catches on because nothing else is on. That's a huge piece of it. But it's interesting, White obviously for years, despite the speech in 2016 at the convention,

had kind of positioned the UFC as the apolitical sport in contrast to what he and I think a lot of UFC fans saw as kind of an overt intrusion of politics and protests and social justice initiatives into the NBA, the NFL, the UFC was supposed to be sort of insulated from that. Of course, in this case, COVID became a great piece of the culture war. And by opening, reopening at all, that's a political stance and certainly was aligned with where Trump was in that moment as he was pushing for a kind of broader reopening of the economy. So suddenly there starts to be some real overlap between the UFC and MAGA world. Absolutely.

And it's been building for some time, but this is the moment that really establishes white as a MAGA superstar of the highest order in a way that even the convention speech didn't. And you see the Trump orbit and the UFC orbit, the white orbit kind of merge. And this cultural moment starts to form around disaffected men who feel slighted, who feel like the world has not been conspiring in their favor for some time. This is like the Manosphere. The Manosphere. And these fights become a gathering place for the leading lights of that intellectual space.

This sort of amorphous right-wing, anti-woke, anti-establishment sentiment. And in his period of not being the president anymore, starting in 2021, Trump is kind of one of those figures. And he becomes somebody who shows up at these fights, frankly in moments of sort of public turmoil for himself. One of the first public appearances he makes in his period of being kind of a pariah after January 6th in 2021 is at a UFC fight. Interesting.

After he's indicted, he goes to a UFC fight. He becomes a sort of bomb and he's walking in and getting a giant ovation among a lot of his supporters and that obviously expanded over the course of these four years in between his terms. So back to your larger point this is more than a sports league. Absolutely and White has accumulated a ton of cultural capital and political capital from being this grand figure in that space and he knows when and how to use it. And I think the most interesting example of this in recent times is with Bud Light. Like the beer.

The beer. Bud Light the beer. Are you familiar with Bud Light as a brand? Matt, keep going. Hi, impressive carrying skills, right? I got some Bud Lights for us. So in the spring of 2023, you see the beginnings of a huge backlash to Bud Light on the political right. This month, I celebrated my day 365 of womanhood and Bud Light sent me possibly the best gift ever, a can with my face on it. Over a promotion they did involving a transgender influencer.

for a promotion they did involving a transgender influencer. Let me say something to all you and be as clear and concise as possible. Fuck Bud Light and fuck Anheuser-Busch. So across conservative media, people are just hammering Bud Light. Bud Light has just released a commemorative can celebrating a man who dresses up like a woman. This is another example of woke corporations and how they completely ignore everything that they really stand for and the people that actually buy their product. I just don't understand that as a marketing tool.

And Dana White is in the process of negotiating a beer sponsorship with Anheuser-Busch, Bud Light's parent company. And he's in a tough position because he's sort of stands accused of selling out for associating with Bud Light after this major backlash, but obviously the sponsorship is lucrative for the UFC. Today's guest is an entrepreneur. He's a renegade.

He's a business mogul. And he is the head of the UFC. So what he does is he sets about trying to uncancel Bud Light. You know, people are talking shit now. Sellout and all the shit that the fuck is it. Believe me, I'm the furthest fucking thing from a sellout. Yeah. And what White does is call himself as a character witness.

Bud Light is the right move for me. They're exactly who I want to be with right now. And we are very aligned as far as core values go. He goes on with Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, with Charlie Kirk. If you consider yourself a patriot, you should be drinking fucking barrels of Bud Light. The message being essentially,

if Bud Light wants to do business with me, like that tells you all you need to know. And privately, he is backchanneling with a lot of these figures. Kid Rock, who had been a part of this effort to protest Bud Light, he is talking to the Anheuser-Busch CEO in White's green room, and they're sort of talking it out and finding a way forward. And then Trump himself, even months after that, is continuing to sort of hammer Bud Light on social media and White speaks to him on the phone.

And after that phone call, Trump posts a sort of follow-up saying that the company deserves a second chance, going through a lot of talking points that echo White's. And lo and behold, about a year after boycotts began and a few weeks after Trump has backed down, I attend a fight in Miami and the fighters are out there bleeding all across the Bud Light logo on the canvas. So White gets what he wants.

It's hard to see another figure say to get that intersection of culture and politics and sports who could have pulled off what White pulled off here. So here you have Dana White convincing Trump to backtrack. And it really just shows how much power White has in this relationship, which is kind of pretty surprising based on everything we know about Trump. Absolutely. And they're both well positioned to do each other some good. And certainly Trump can call in White to help him in moments of political need as well.

And we see that in this last campaign. So what happens in the campaign exactly with White? A couple of things. I mean, again, he's speaking at the convention, so that's the sort of explicit overt, you know, endorsement. And nobody was surprised he was there this time. But the sort of broader kind of role he plays in this is as this kind of master of ceremonies, White, for this entire universe of people. The fights become gathering places and he can make connections between Trump and these

figures in the Manosphere, whether that's Joe Rogan, whose podcast he ends up doing, the Nelk Boys, his other podcasters, Theo Vaughn. White is in the middle of all of that, the kind of chief ambassador moving between Trump and these worlds. And the Trump campaign as part of its strategy sees a lot of voters who don't necessarily engage with politics, who are not following the news closely, a really target demographic for them. They're going after people who often skew younger and male, who are not necessarily

ideological or don't sort of fall on ideological lines on the issues in the way that you would expect traditionally. And a lot of those people watch the UFC and a lot of people in that world respect Dana White's opinion. And so Trump is appearing on a lot of these podcasts. He's speaking to these audiences. Right. And just remind people, this was the Holy Grail demographic, right?

Because in part, it was so hard to reach the people who don't ordinarily follow politics and really don't necessarily vote that much. Yeah and it's been traditionally hard to break through to that demographic and the Trump campaign had a lot of success. Welcome to UFC unfiltered, Matt and I... The Trump campaign is really trying to meet them where they are. I mean Trump did a UFC fan podcast and wasn't talking about any kind of policy. Are you good at making picks? I don't know how many fights I watch, I'm terrible at making picks. I'm always wrong.

Well, this sport is interesting. Like I watched Usman. I think he's a terrific guy, by the way. This was a guy talking about fights and having actually the really interesting level of recall about specific fights and the history of it, the intricacies of the UFC. You know, I look at like UFC or boxing or any of these things, even sports generally. It's sort of a microcosm of life. It's actually about as close to contemplative as I've heard him get.

He gives this answer talking about fights that it's sort of a microcosm of life. It's the sort of binary thing. There are winners and losers. And you can sort of see how that maps onto his political worldview. You know, it's so interesting. But the nice part, it's over in a period of a half an hour, 45 minutes. It's all over and you sort of see a decision. But it's a little bit like life when you think about it. And obviously Trump wins the election in November, and he and his team are well aware of how integral that strategy was and White's role in it.

And on election night, after midnight, as he's giving his victory speech, We also have a man, Dana White, who has done some good. Does he pull up on stage to the microphone to give some remarks? But Mr. Dana White. And White proceeds to give a speech that is not surprising to anybody who's listened to him or Trump talk about these recent years. It's heavy on the sort of expert consensus being wrong. This is what happens when the machine comes after you. What do you see?

And he shouts out these figures. I want to thank some people real quick. I want to thank the NELP boys, Aiden Ross. From this universe, he sort of presides over in some ways. And last but not least, the mighty and powerful Joe Rogan. So once again, these two men are validated in their instincts to buck the system, like to go with their gut, really in the most extraordinary way, and in the end, kind of shock the establishment. Absolutely.

I think both of them have learned that lesson time and again in their public lives that expert consensus is often nonsense, that their instincts are to be trusted. What you've seen I think from both of them is a sort of recognition that they can be their purest, basest selves and that that would be rewarded. So these two have learned all the same lessons up to this point. But I guess Matt, looking forward, you know, if politics, as we know, is downstream from culture, and Trump is clearly identifying the UFC as a very valuable part of culture to him politically, then what can we learn about where we're headed, looking at where the UFC is now?

What does it tell us about the future? I think White and Trump both saw around the corner here about what the UFC could become in the cultural and political space that it has become. And there's a reason to think now that it will be any less important, it'll probably be even more important. And the way that the two of them see the world mean that their worldview will matter quite a bit.

And Wett has really articulated his worldview quite clearly. To quote him, America has become so soft. If you have even this much savage in you, everything out there right now is for the taking. Wow. And that sounds like Trump. There's a reason they're friends. Matt, thank you. Thank you, Sabrina. Why do you think the violence appeals to you? I just like how brutal it is. It's different than boxing.

It's very relaxing to me because of the violence of it. I could watch it every day. Why do you think this is a thing that men are so into? I feel like it's just embedded in every guy, like every guy's DNA. It's like instinctual type shit, right? I mean this is what we used to do like hundreds of years ago. You know, we were gladiators. You know, it's just part of us.

I've never seen a head do that before. I like the fact that a man can be a man, and he can put his hands on another man and not go to jail. Do you feel like it's an outlet for something you don't get to express in other areas of your life? Hell yes. Yes. You can let the rage out and not get in trouble. So, 100%. We'll be right back. Here's what else you should know today. Ukraine's leader has followed through on his threat to shut down the last major pipeline that carried natural gas from Russia to Europe.

By closing the pipeline, Ukraine hopes to undermine Russia's ability to fund its war against Ukraine and use energy as a weapon against Europe. Before it stopped operating on Wednesday, the pipeline had brought Russia more than $6 billion in revenue a year. Ukraine's energy minister called the closure a quote, historical event. Today's episode was produced by Nina Feldman, Olivia Gnat, Sydney Harper, and Claire Tenesketter with help from Shannon Lin, Rachelle Bonge, and Astha Chaturvedi. It

was edited by Lexi Diao with help from Michael Benoit, contains original music by Dan Powell and Marian Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. Special thanks to Joseph Bernstein. That's it for the daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you tomorrow.