The Ultimate Fighting Championship, the promoter of mixed martial arts competition, has staged two marquee events in Washington over the past 15 years, in both cases procuring permits from the D.C. government to hold the caged slugfests.
What about now that the UFC is planning to entertain a certain someone at the White House?
Not so much.
UFC officials have signaled they don’t need a permit to host the June 14 showdown on the South Lawn — an event ordered up by President Donald Trump, the country’s preeminent fan of the sport that blends boxing, jujitsu and wrestling.
Andrew Huff, chair of the D.C. Combat Sports Commission, which regulates boxing, pro wrestling and mixed martial arts in the city, says the UFC has said the $100 permit is unnecessary because the event is “taking place on federal land.”
Following Trump’s second term
A UFC spokesperson declined to comment. So far, neither D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) nor the White House has raised objections.
Without the permit, the commission would consider the bouts an unsanctioned event, and the results would not count toward the fighters’ official records, Huff said.
The commission also requires fighters — as well as managers and promoters, among others — to obtain occupational licenses to participate. Combatants are typically asked to submit medical records, undergo a physical examination administered by a doctor assigned by the commission and appear at a commission-sanctioned weigh-in.
The UFC has its own medical staffers, Huff said, but he doesn’t believe they are impartial because they are the promoter’s employees. He said he is unaware of any specific protocols the UFC might institute for the fights.
“We don’t know anything,” Huff said. “Every promoter in the District of Columbia should be, and is, held to the same standard, whether you’re putting on a small wrestling show or a major event. I’m concerned about precedent. What happens when someone puts on a boxing match in Malcolm X Park? They don’t need to get us involved?”
The Trump administration did not respond to an email seeking comment.
A timeless symbol of American power, the White House has never hosted a spectacle as indelicate as a professional fight, an event fittingly inspired by a norm-busting president whose allies happen to include the UFC’s chief executive, Dana White.
The Republican Party’s ties to the UFC were punctuated earlier this week when the company said current and former fighters would teach their combat techniques to FBI agents and senior leaders at the agency’s Quantico training facility this weekend.
“This is a tremendous opportunity for our FBI agents to learn [from] and train with some of the greatest athletes on earth,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement.
The gladiator-style showdown at the White House is timed to coincide with Trump’s 80th birthday, a milestone that is another opportunity for the president to remind Americans of his penchant for showmanship.
“Previous presidents believed pretty strongly in protecting the dignity of the office,” Michael Kazin, a Georgetown University professor of history, said in an email. “But we’ve never had a president who got elected, twice, more because he’s a great performer than a politician in any traditional sense.”
The White House is planning to invite 5,000 guests to watch the six scheduled bouts, which will be fought in a caged, 25,000-pound octagon constructed for the occasion a few yards from the Oval Office. Tens of thousands more fight fans will be able to view the fights on giant screens on the Ellipse, a 52-acre park otherwise known as a setting for picnics, sightseeing and the lighting of the National Christmas Tree.
Promoters have also talked of staging the ceremonial weigh-in on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
White, during an interview last year, said the fighters would “walk out of the Oval Office” on their way to the ring. “We’re gonna be on the f---ing South Lawn of the White House!” White gushed on the “Impaulsive” podcast. “We’re gonna take over D.C. the whole week.”
The UFC previously hosted matches in D.C. in 2011 and 2019, both times at what is now known as Capital One Arena. The company obtained permits for the two events, Huff said.
N. Nick Perry, chairman of the New York Athletic Commission, said that holding the UFC match without permits — at the White House or anywhere, for that matter — “does not send the right message.”
“Wherever the land is, I would suspect that local law would be applicable,” Perry said. “Laws should apply across the board to everybody, especially laws that govern things like boxing and games where there are certain standards that are expected to be maintained.”
The UFC’s White House event is part of a menu of spectacles the Trump administration is organizing to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday. On Monday, Bowser joined two Cabinet secretaries to unveil the course for what is billed as the Freedom 250 Grand Prix of Washington, D.C., an Aug. 23 race slated to take place along 1.66 miles of streets around the National Mall.
Bowser has not publicly addressed the UFC fights.
Asked about the event, Nina Albert, the deputy mayor for planning and economic development, said in an emailed statement that the city “is proud to be a world-class host for all types of entertainment” and that revenues generated by visitors are “economic engines that help fund our investments in schools, healthcare, and parks.”
The deputy mayor, through a spokesperson, declined to comment on the UFC not seeking a permit for the event.
The city’s five-member Combat Sports Commission, appointed by Bowser and confirmed by the D.C. Council, assigns licensed physicians to monitor bouts from ringside seats, a precaution that ensures added scrutiny for a sport that has caused concussions, fractures and deep lacerations. The doctors have the authority to stop fights for medical reasons.
“I don’t want to convey the impression that without the commission someone will be in danger,” Huff said. “But without the commission, you’re missing an additional layer of oversight.”
The commission also dispatches inspectors to observe fighters before their matches, including when their hands are being taped, “to make sure nothing mischievous is going on,” Huff said.
The commission can issue fines for bouts held without permits, though Huff said he was unaware of any such penalties being imposed in the 10 years since the mayor appointed him to the panel.
Huff said he was excited when Trump first spoke last summer about hosting the UFC at the White House. Huff said that Marc Ratner, UFC’s vice president of government and regulatory affairs, contacted the commission in November to confirm that the event would happen in June.
“At the end of the call, we started to discuss our authority, and I said that in my view, the commission, if it was going to be a sanctioned event, would have a role in regulating it,” Huff recalled. “He didn’t say anything.”
In February, Huff said, Ratner called again to “advise that they had made the decision to not work through the commission.”
Huff said the UFC’s brush-off, at least as it stands now, is a reminder of “federal overreach in terms of local affairs.”
Washingtonians have already experienced at least one Trump-inspired spectacle: last summer’s military parade that crowded city streets and skies with combat vehicles and helicopters.
Residents of Foggy Bottom, the neighborhood adjacent to the White House, say they’re not eager to face another presidential showcase.
“I would say it’s insane, but I have lived through the last eight years,” said Jim Malec, a Foggy Bottom advisory neighborhood commissioner. “It’s ridiculous, it’s so self-indulgent, and it reflects the worst aspects of the American character.”
He said he had braced for the military parade only to find “it wasn’t that big a deal.”
“Hopefully this’ll be the same, but who knows,” he said. “Everything is a wild card with this White House.”
Perry Stein contributed to this report.
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