Oval Office octagon: How Trump turned combat sports into a political weapon

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The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event on Sunday, which will also mark next month’s 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, will bring 14 Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighters to “The Octagon” cage constructed on the White House South Lawn. As many as 4,000 invite-only attendees will watch the bouts, which will include two title fights, in an unprecedented display of a sport that has lingered on the fringes but has, nevertheless, been a potent political medium for the president. Trump, a former television personality, real estate heir and hotel owner, has hewed closely to combat sports, dating back to his scene-stealing embrace of professional wrestling in the late 1980s. Al Jazeera spoke to experts who study the intersection of sport and society about what the UFC match both reflects and projects of Trump’s pugilistic political career, and how it could be received in the current political moment. In the 1980s, Trump was solidifying his place as a nationally known real-estate developer, casino magnate, and tabloid-ready socialite. World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and its flamboyant entertainment-first style of choreographed wrestling was on a “cultural upswing”, according to Lowery Woodall, a professor at Millersville University in Pennsylvania who studies wrestling. It was a fast business pairing, beginning with Trump promoting the WWE’s flagship event, Wrestlemania, at a venue near to his Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1988 and 1989. But Trump’s affinity for the sport and the kindred spirit he appeared to find with WWE co-founder Vince McMahon extended beyond business, into his own nascent personal myth-building. Trump began regularly appearing as an exaggerated version of himself on the WWE’s flagship events. He and McMahon eventually took part in the so-called “Battle of Billionaires” in 2007, backing opposing fighters while inflating their net worths for maximum entertainment value. “We see a long history in wrestling of promoting things that aren’t entirely accurate to the fans, for example, taking someone who might have been born and raised in Minnesota and saying that they’re Russian because we need a Russian adversary,” Woodall explained. “I might argue that the very liberal relationship that professional wrestling has with the truth might in fact be one of the things that attracts Trump to it,” he said. “The truth, as is told to the audience, becomes whatever is needed within that moment… which feels quite frankly very much aligned with Trump’s own political messaging outside of the world of professional wrestling.” Some have argued that Trump’s foray into politics has been, in part, aided by the ease of playing the “heel”, or antagonist, in the wider American narrative, dominating headlines by regularly riling political friends and foes alike. But the WWE days saw him instead representing the “baby-face”, an industry term for the classic “good guy”. His character even dipped into the anti-corruption, “drain the swamp” populism that helped carry Trump to the White House in his unlikely 2016 election victory. “If anything, he is seen as the sort of corrective measure against the corrupting force of the Mr McMahon character who is doing dastardly things every week on television to all of your favourite wrestling superstars,” Woodall explained. “Someone else who has a similar level of wealth and power to you steps into the situation and says, ‘no, no, this is all wrong, we can’t continue to do this. I have the power to usurp your authority and overcome you, ” he said. Upon moving into the White House, first in 2017 and again in 2025, traces of Trump’s television career endured. During his first term, he appointed Omarosa Manigault Newman, a contestant on the first season of his reality television show, “The Apprentice”, to his White House staff. He tapped WWE co-founder Linda McMahon, Vince McMahon’s wife, as the Administrator of the Small Business Administration. Linda McMahon is currently in Trump’s second term as education secretary, a cabinet position from which she has overseen several of Trump’s initiatives, including efforts to limit transgender individuals from competing in college athletics and supporting crackdowns on pro-Palestine advocates. But while WWE lore may have helped to shape Trump’s public persona, his embrace of UFC, beginning with hosting events at his hotel in the early 2000s, may have been more helpful to his unlikely political comeback ahead of the 2024 presidential victory: helping him to tap into otherwise unengaged young, male voters. “Trump is very good at putting on shows and entertaining people, but it’s more than just the theatrics,” Aaron Ettinger, a professor of international relations at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, told Al Jazeera. “There’s a political agenda underpinning all of this.” “UFC is aggressive in a way that appeals to that Trumpian sense of masculinity,” he said. “It’s violent. There’s nothing soft about it. It can’t be construed as lefty, social activist-y.” Both UFC and WWE merged under the TKO Holdings company in 2023. They boast the same flair for the dramatic, with fighters cultivating personas often based on ethnicity or political affiliations, even if the two sports are separated by a defining difference: WWE is heavily scripted, whereas UFC fights are traditional sporting contests with the winner decided in the match, either via knockout, submission or points. Average UFC fights get between 300,000 and 2 million views, according to the sports betting site BetMGM, with the audience skewing heavily towards young, male viewers. The UFC culture is also deeply intertwined with the influential world of podcasting. Joe Rogan, one of the sport’s staunchest supporters, averages about 11 million listeners per podcast episode. “The audience for this is predominantly young men, and young men in America are some of the most apolitical parts of the population,” Ettinger said. “So it’s a very effective way of mobilising a segment of the electorate.” Rogan, who endorsed Trump ahead of the 2024 vote, is set to commentate on Sunday’s event. Nevertheless, he has criticised holding official UFC title bouts in an outside setting that could affect the fights’ outcomes. He has also questioned holding the event amid the ongoing US-Israeli war with Iran. The White House fight night comes just days after kick off of the FIFA World Cup 2026, the most-watched sporting event in the world, across the US, Canada and Mexico. The UFC event, whose viewers are predominantly based in the US, with other market hubs, including Brazil, China, Russia and the UK, is charting a different path. Kyle Kusz, a professor at the University of Rhode Island, said the event appears to be an attempt by Trump to project a “warrior-style sporting masculinity”, what he described as Trump’s “sporting vision of an ideal nation”. That echoes the Trump administration’s vows, espoused by Pentagon Chief Pete Hegseth, to return a “warrior ethos” to the US military and a zero-sum approach to US military engagement abroad. The Trump administration appears to hope that vision reverberates across the globe. On Thursday, UFC President Dana White and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed an agreement to promote the brand, which he described as distinctly American, as part of a “sports diplomacy” initiative. “We’re excited about what this brand means about America’s ability to expand and reach out to different parts of the world,” he said, likening the “audacious” UFC approach to the US moon landing. He further called the UFC “the United Nations of fighting”, pointing to the varied nationalities of fighters. The UFC may appeal to the Trump administration for other reasons, argued Kusz. He pointed to parallels between Trump’s consolidating approach to presidential power and the UFC’s closely controlled corporate environment, including White’s outsized influence. The UFC has contended with a slate of lawsuits, with fighters alleging the brand holds an MMA monopoly that limits opportunity. Simultaneously, competitors are employed as contractors, limiting their ability to unionise. The brand has maintained an “anti-establishment kind of patina,” Kusz explained, “yet at the same time the whole structure of UFC is straight out of like the 1890s… You have kind of the great robber barons running the show, where most of the spoils go to the Dana Whites of the world versus to the fighters who are the workers.” Another likely appeal to Trump, who has been booed at a slate of recent sporting events, including the NBA finals in New York’s Madison Square Garden: a spectacle with carefully controlled optics. Beyond the guest list being subject to the administration’s will, US media has widely reported that attending members of the US military must meet a waist-to-height ratio. A Pentagon memo points to the “high visibility” of the event. “The UFC event will be tightly controlled and orchestrated,” Kusz said. “I imagine that for White and Trump, the idea behind that is they’re going to get the spectacle that they want.” Trump is no stranger to championing elaborate events that mix patriotic messaging with his own personal milestones. Last year, he held a military parade in Washington, DC, marking both the US Army’s 250th anniversary and his own 79th birthday. But Sunday’s display comes at a particularly fraught time. Trump has seen his public approval dip amid the US-Israeli war with Iran, which his administration launched on February 28. US residents have grappled with the knock-on effects on the economy, including sky-high gas prices. Trump has again claimed a possible deal for a lasting ceasefire with Iran is in its final stages, although similar messaging has proved hollow in the past. A Reuters-Ipsos poll released on Thursday found that just 16 percent of Americans felt the event was appropriate, with 46 percent saying it was inappropriate. At least one lawsuit has been unsuccessfully filed to halt the event, arguing it did not go through the proper federal permitting process. In a response filing the Trump administration said over $60mn had been poured into the proceedings, with seven federal agencies involved. The White House has maintained the UFC is footing the majority of the bill. The climate, said Millersville University’s Woodall, makes it “hard not to imagine that this is going to come off as the wealthiest, most entitled parts of our society watching blood sport while their country is in economic turmoil, when people are having to make extraordinarily difficult decisions about how to pay for things like groceries and medications”. “I would argue,” he added, “that the optics of the class warfare outdo the optics of the actual pugilism that’s occurring inside the octagon.” Advertisement AboutAboutShow moreAbout UsCode of EthicsTerms and ConditionsEU/EEA Regulatory NoticePrivacy PolicyCookie PolicyCookie PreferencesAccessibility StatementSitemapWork for usConnectConnectShow moreContact UsUser Accounts HelpAdvertise with usStay ConnectedNewslettersChannel FinderTV SchedulePodcastsSubmit a TipPaid Partner ContentOur ChannelsOur ChannelsShow moreAl Jazeera ArabicAl Jazeera EnglishAl Jazeera Investigative UnitAl Jazeera MubasherAl Jazeera DocumentaryAl Jazeera BalkansAJ+Our NetworkOur NetworkShow moreAl Jazeera Centre for StudiesAl Jazeera Media InstituteLearn ArabicAl Jazeera Centre for Public Liberties & Human RightsAl Jazeera ForumAl Jazeera Hotel PartnersFollow Al Jazeera English: