Donald Trump’s 80th birthday weekend didn’t all go well for him, at home or abroad. His name finally got pulled off the Kennedy Center early Saturday, after lots of effort to halt and obscure the removal. And word got out that the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool that the president desperately wants credit for beautifying was already taken over by algae. Then there’s the matter of his dumbass and deadly Iran invasion ending in his thorough embarrassment.
But, UFC Freedom 250, the bizarre fight card that Trump hosted on the damn South Lawn of the damn White House, allegedly to celebrate our country’s sestercentennial but really to glorify and enrich himself and his lousy rich friends, went off without much of a hitch. I’m not sure, as the administration and UFC boss Dana White would want me to believe, that my Uncle Pat lost his leg while storming the beach at Normandy so I and 80,000 others could drink bottomless cans of zero-sugar energy drinks on federal land while guys beat the holy hell out of each other. But the bouts, all of which ended in KO’s, weren’t made any better or worse for their setting.
Trump and his UFC pals made endless attempts to link the pugilistic proceedings to patriotism, each effort more hamfisted than the last. The hamfisticuffs peaked with featherweight Secretary of State Marco Rubio comparing hosting the fight card to putting a man on the moon.
“We are a nation founded on doing what no one else dared to do and no one else aspired to do,” Rubio said during his moonbeam address at the State Department alongside White.
But anybody looking for what this country really stands for could find it all over D.C. last week. A pop-up UFC retail outlet mere blocks from the White House, for example, was offering skimpy Jon Jones fighting shorts for $315 a pair, alongside Trump coins at prices from $249.99 to $11,999.99 apiece. Ain’t that America for you and me?
Trump, ever stuck in This Land Is My Land mode, let his powerful pals at UFC and Paramount turn the Lincoln Memorial into a soundstage for a pre-show press conference. White had been inviting fans to show up for weeks to the media gathering, and many thousand did, only to learn the hard way that the setup was strictly for television. Even folks standing at the front barriers (me among them) could see nothing but broadcast equipment and the backs of people working to air the event. The big screens set up on the premises were usually not even showing what was going on, and the public address system only occasionally let fans hear what was going out over the airwaves. “Down in front!” chants provided the most energetic crowd moments. Yet for anybody finding the proceedings distasteful, Abe Lincoln was majestic as ever looking down from his big chair inside the Memorial, and the sky over the Mall was red and beautiful with a double rainbow for much of the event.
Trump let booze, gambling, energy drink, and crypto corporations post their logos and hawk their wares all over the people’s property during a massive UFC Freedom 250 viewing party on the Ellipse. They were still just fights. UFC said they gave away 80,000 free tickets to the soiree, and though no official attendance was released, from the looks of things a healthy percentage of those folks showed up. All the streets and some bridges around the White House were closed to cars and many even to pedestrian traffic. But anybody who endured the hassles to get to the watch party got military flyovers, including one that shook all of D.C. at 11:35 p.m. on a school night, and umpteen product giveaways.
Those folks, plus everybody watching at home, witnessed Trump looking even more unsteady and bloated than usual as he hobbled out to a cageside seat. (While I heard none of the booing Trump got at Madison Square Garden a week ago, his entrance did not get anywhere near the big pop from the Ellipse crowd that I assumed he’d get, given the overlap between UFC fans and supporters of the president.) Then came the fights.
The opening bout, between Brazilian Diego Lopes and American Steve Garcia, showcased no more technical wizardry than a closing-time bar fight, but Lopes ended the scrap in the second round with a wild left-right-left combo. Bo Nickal, a former college wrestling hero and Trump’s golf buddy, then KO’d Kyle Daukaus as organizers wanted, as their middleweight tilt finished with a series of Nickal elbows to Daukaus’s head. Except perhaps the event’s octogenarian host, lightweight Michael Chandler looked as feeble as anybody on the premises while ending up unconscious in the first round against Mauricio Ruffy.
Heavyweight Josh Hokit was more willing than others to make himself an avatar for all the awful things Trump wanted this card to stand for. Hokit’s notoriety had thus far come mainly from being a onetime practice squad member of the San Francisco 49ers and an awful person. He spent the pre-fight press conference, to an absolutely relentless degree, performing as a character who spoke with a halting speech pattern. Hokit came to the White House cage emulating another famous American douche, sporting a Hulk Hogan-like flag bandana and accompanied by Hogan’s entrance music (“Real American” by Rick Derringer), and is surely auditioning for a post-UFC career as a WWE heel. But for now he really makes it impossible not to hate him. Hokit dispatched of post-expiration-date tub of goo Derrick Lewis as painfully as he was expected to. Veteran referee Herb Dean made things more savage than need be by letting Hokit hit Lewis with seven superfluous and massive headshots when he was on his back and not fighting back. When the fighting was done, Hokit used his post-fight interview to shout, “Michelle Obama is a man!”
Crowd favorite Sean O’Malley put overmatched Aiemann Zahabi down for the count with a massive right hand four minutes into the second round of their bantamweight bout. O’Malley provided the best highlight of the night by celebrating like he’d won a world war even before Zahabi carcass had even hit the canvas.
In the co-main event, Brazilian Alex Pereira went from UFC golden boy to an old man with a murky future by taking a career-altering amount of punishment from France’s Ciryl Gane while losing their heavyweight title fight by upset. Pereira was going for a belt in his third weight division in his first fight as a heavyweight, but looked weak and small against career heavyweight Gane. Pereira had been out on his feet from a barrage of head shots for about 20 seconds before referee Dean finally stopped the beating in the second round.
The card closed with alleged phenom Ilia Topuria losing his lightweight belt and lofty spot in the sport by taking a barbarous beating from Justin Gaethje. Topuria, a Spaniard, came in as the undefeated and very heavy favorite and the prospective face of the UFC. He left with that face grotesquely disfigured, sitting on his stool after four rounds of pure pounding from Gaethje. The shocking outcome, which arrived shortly after 1:00 a.m., gave the American challenger his first undisputed title, and sent anybody looking for a patriotic fix from a night of cage fights home with what they came for.