Pod Insights If You're Listening Trump’s unbreakable bond with the UFC About this episode Before it was a billion-dollar sporting empire, the UFC was fighting for survival. Regulators wanted it banned, broadcasters kept their distance. The company was down for the count. Then Donald Trump stepped in. When few venues would host the sport, he opened the doors of the Trump Taj Mahal, giving the sport a much-needed lifeline and UFC President Dana White never forgot it. Decades later, the relationship may have come full circle. After January 6, Trump's approval rating was collapsing, and some of his first major public appearances were cage-side at UFC events, reconnecting him with the young male audience that helped power his 2024 victory. Now, as new political challenges emerge, the UFC is back by Trump's side. But can it save him again?
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0:08 Speaker 00 Tammy Shipley believed someone was out to hurt her.
0:11 Speaker 01 I thought someone was after me and I wanted to just be safe.
0:13 Speaker 00 She's put under 24 hour surveillance.
0:15 Speaker 02 I tried to get in contact multiple times.
0:18 Speaker 01 I just need to make the phone call, nobody knows who I am.
0:21 Speaker 00 And then something strange happens.
0:23 Speaker 03 She just drank and drank and had something like 20 litres of pure water.
0:27 Speaker 04 Ambulance emergency. I've got a woman unconscious.
0:30 Speaker 00 Tammy's story. Search Background Briefing on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:38 Speaker 05 This podcast was produced on the lands of the Uabakal and Gadigal people. Back in the 1980s, US President Ronald Reagan started giving kids big jars of jelly beans when they visited the White House. In here is a jar with that seal engraved on it and it's filled with jelly beans. Reagan had been a smoker back in the 60s, but he'd managed to kick the habit by switching an addiction to cigarettes with an addiction to Jelly Belly jelly beans. And so in the 1980s, when he became US president, his obsession with those jelly beans boosted that company's sales massively. But closely associating your brand with a politician can be a bit of a mixed blessing.
1:25 Speaker 05 Decades later, Mike Lindell, better known as the My Pillow Guy, hitched his wagon to US President Donald Trump and... I ran out of money. I have no money personally, nothing left, nothing left. Lindell spent all of his money trying to prove the 2020 election was stolen and ended up with none of it.
1:47 Speaker 05 This year, on Donald Trump's 80th birthday, there was a big party on his back lawn.
1:53 Speaker 04 Welcome to UFC Freedom 250. Here is the President of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump.
2:06 Speaker 05 Now, on the surface, it seems a little odd that the president would give a private company exclusive rights to broadcast the proceedings of his 80th birthday on publicly owned land.
2:19 Speaker 05 It's also odd that the sport chosen is mixed martial arts. Less than 10% of Americans say they follow combat sport. It's less popular than basketball and tennis, and the White House lawn already has a basketball and tennis court. But this wasn't really about the popularity of the sport.
2:39 Speaker 05 It was about the importance of this particular company, the UFC,
2:46 Speaker 05 to Donald Trump.
2:55 Speaker 05 Trump and the UFC have been entangled for decades. The UFC's president says its current success and popularity is partially down to something Donald Trump did to help them 25 years ago. This event at the White House publicly and permanently tied the UFC to Donald Trump, like Jelly Belly and Ronald Reagan. The question is, will the UFC's boss Dana White end up cashing in like the boss of Jelly Belly? Or will he be more like the MyPillow guy? I have no money personally, nothing left, nothing left. I'm Matt Bevan, and this is If You're Listening.
3:37 Speaker 04 Hail to the Navy, that great bulwark of democracy.
3:41 Speaker 05 This story starts with the US Navy and its boxing programme.
3:44 Speaker 04 A fighting tradition instilled in its corps of officers at the US Naval Academy at Annapolis.
3:50 Speaker 05 In the 1950s, one of the young men being trained as a naval officer at Annapolis was John McCain III. Both John McCain I and John McCain II were admirals in the Navy, so John McCain III had quite a bit of expectation hanging over his head. At the academy, recruits would compete against each other in boxing to earn days of leave. During his time there, McCain became quite an accomplished lightweight boxer, and even when he left the Navy to pursue a career in politics, he never lost his love of the sport. First and foremost, I'm a fervent lifelong...
4:26 Speaker 01 Fan of the sport. I have followed professional boxing closely for over four decades.
4:31 Speaker 05 When McCain entered the US Congress, he took special interest in policies related to boxing.
4:37 Speaker 01 Professional boxing has commonly been called the sweet science and the red light district of sports. Both are accurate descriptions.
4:44 Speaker 05 In this capacity, he also looked into other combat sports. In 1993, that included the emerging sport of mixed martial arts, or MMA.
4:55 Speaker 04 We're live from the mile high city of Denver, Colorado, at the McNichols Sports Arena, the site of tonight's landmark martial arts event.
5:03 Speaker 05 This was the first ever Ultimate Fighting Championship event.
5:07 Speaker 04 Be forewarned, there are no rules, no judges' scores, and no time limits.
5:13 Speaker 05 There were also no gloves and no weight divisions. The first ever fight at the UFC was between a Dutch kickboxer and a Hawaiian sumo wrestler who was almost twice his weight.
5:27 Speaker 05 The fight lasted 28 seconds before sumo wrestler Thalia Tuli charged at his opponent and fell to the ground. Kickboxer Gerard Gordo then kicked Tuli in the head.
5:44 Speaker 05 One of Tuli's teeth was found in the crowd. Two more were embedded in Gordo's foot. Gordo then broke his own hand by punching Tuli in the eye. That fight was over, but Gordo fought two more times that night with that broken hand and Tuli's teeth still stuck in his foot. In Gordo's next MMA appearance, he gouged Japanese fighter Yuki Nakai's right eye and punched him in the head over and over while he was on the ground. Nakai somehow ended up winning that fight.
6:23 Speaker 05 Nakai fought two more times that night before retiring from the sport. He was permanently blind in his right eye from Gordo's gouging, but he hid that fact for years to try and protect MMA's reputation.
6:39 Speaker 05 When Senator John McCain heard about the incredible level of violence in MMA, he was horrified. This, to him, was miles away from good old fashioned boxing. What it was at the beginning was human cockfighting. Now, it's worth noting that cockfighting, as in two roosters fighting each other in a pit, was still legal in McCain's home state of Arizona at the time. But he was determined that this new sport, known as mixed martial arts, should be banned. Now, I've seen people repeatedly getting smashed in the face with a guy sitting on top of them. That's not a sport. That's a throwback to the Roman Colosseum. But how can a US senator get a sport banned?
7:23 Speaker 05 Well, sports organisations need two things: venues to hold their events in and lucrative broadcast agreements. And John McCain was determined to cut the UFC's access to both of those things.
7:38 Speaker 05 From the 1980s onwards, combat sports tended to make their money through pay-per-view agreements with cable TV networks.
7:47 Speaker 05 You'd pay money to the cable company and you'd get access to the event.
7:56 Speaker 05 If McCain could cut off the UFC's access to venues and pay-per-view money, he could kill the sport.
8:04 Speaker 05 So he began sending letters to every state governor in the country and asked them to ban it. He encouraged major cable operators to ban the UFC from their networks as well. By 1997, the UFC was struggling. Thirty-six states refused to allow the UFC to fight there, including the traditional homes of big combat sports events like Nevada, California and New York. Their 12th event, UFC 12, was due to be held in Niagara Falls, New York, but was banned at the last minute.
8:41 Speaker 05 Than Niagara Falls. It's the Ultimate Fighting Championship. They were forced to move it to the small city of Dothan in rural Alabama. It was recently voted the number one place to live in Alabama and at one time was considered the peanut capital of the world. But despite these huge setbacks, the UFC was still trying to expand. They hired a young comedian and actor to be their ringside interviewer. Right now, let's go to Joe Rogan. Thanks, Bruce. I'm back here right now backstage. I'll be interviewing the fighters as they come out of the octagon. Just two events after Joe Rogan arrived, McCain successfully got UFC banned from cable television,
9:23 Speaker 05 cutting off its main source of revenue. The UFC was in dire straits and as a last ditch attempt to make money, they started relying on distributing VHS tapes. It's the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Rent it today only from TriMark Home Video. In terms of holding their events, they were essentially confined to deep, deep red rural states like Alabama and Louisiana. And even in those states, it was difficult to secure a venue. Two events, for instance, were held under a circus tent in the parking lot of a small Mississippi casino with a capacity of under 500. Great fishing, fresh seafood and the glorious water to the Gulf of Mexico.
10:07 Speaker 05 Once a sleepy town, it has come alive. It's like holding a UFC event in the car park of the Inas fail leagues club. If you don't know where that is, well, that's my point. By 2000, the UFC was on the verge of bankruptcy, but it had an unexpected win in New Jersey, where the state's Athletic Commission agreed to a trial event in the state held under more restrictive rules. The fighters would need to wear gloves. There were weight divisions and stomps, head butts, eye gouges and strikes to the groin were strictly prohibited. They still needed a venue, though. Thankfully, one particular guy was looking for new sources
10:52 Speaker 05 of revenue for his perennially bankrupt Atlantic City Casino. Well, we are in the octagon here tonight. Trump Taj Mahal Casino and Resort. On the banks of the Atlantic Ocean in beautiful Atlantic City, New Jersey. But of course, if Tannen himself. It's already been a very impressive evening here in a very impressive venue. That is the Trump Taj Mahal. This was the first UFC fight to be officially regulated. This event tonight is sanctioned by the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board with Mr. Larry Hazard, Commissioner. Throughout the entire night, the commentators kept saying how safe the whole thing was. Safety always, as we've talked about before, the ultimate number one priority here in the Ultimate Fighting Championship. But what a shot. Boom!
11:37 Speaker 05 Safety first. Boom! Concussion. Hell yeah. Now, the guy who took the shot you just heard there was named John Lewis. Here's how the commentators that night described him.
11:47 Speaker 03 Strong background in jiu-jitsu, but he also likes to bang.
11:50 Speaker 05 Okay, good for him. That safety concussion was his last time fighting in the UFC. He retired shortly afterwards. But for his entourage, it was just the beginning. John Lewis had brought with him a few of his jiu-jitsu students, including a guy named Dana White, who had met Lewis in Las Vegas.
12:15 Speaker 04 I said, I know this guy. We'll go talk to him. So we went over and we talked to John Lewis that night. And we set up an appointment with him for Monday to try jiu-jitsu. And after that, we became addicted to it. We literally started to train three, four days a week.
12:31 Speaker 05 Dana White and his friends Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta were at the Taj Mahal that night with John Lewis. They found out that the UFC was in financial dire straits, and they decided to buy it for $2 million.
12:44 Speaker 04 We bought the three letters, UFC, old wooden octagon, and like 12 or 13 contracts.
12:51 Speaker 05 It was so cheap because the previous owners had sold off everything else to try and keep it afloat. White and his new partners decided if they wanted to turn the UFC around, they needed to act fast.
13:02 Speaker 04 We knew to make this successful, we had to get this thing on television. When we bought it, it wasn't allowed on pay-per-view. Right.
13:10 Speaker 05 When they bought the franchise, they urgently needed to find a venue for the next event. They were facing the same struggles as the previous owners had faced.
13:19 Speaker 04 We can't get a venue. Donald Trump actually says, "Come to the Taj."
13:24 Speaker 05 The next two UFC events were held at the Trump Taj Mahal.
13:28 Speaker 04 We went to the Taj, Trump cut us a deal, showed up to the first fight, stayed to the last. You know, both times that we put on a card there.
13:36 Speaker 05 To Dana White, this was a very generous gesture by Trump.
13:40 Speaker 04 Trump brand here. Right, right, at that time. UFC brand here. Right. You know, this guy has been a good friend. He's been, you know, a guy who did something at a time, saw something in this thing when nobody else did, and did something for us that nobody else would.
13:57 Speaker 05 "He did something for us that nobody else would." Let's fast forward 20 years, because by that point, the tables had turned. The UFC was a multi-billion dollar brand, and Donald Trump was not in vogue.
14:19 Speaker 00 In their thousands, they came, marching on the seat and the heart of American democracy, breaching its defences for the first time in more than 200 years.
14:31 Speaker 05 Following the attack on the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, and his departure from the White House two weeks later, Donald Trump kind of disappeared from public view for a little while. The former president had been mostly silent since his sullen departure from Washington on inauguration day, in disgrace for his role in inciting the January 6 insurrection. In terms of public support, he was at an all-time low. Less than 40% of Americans had a favorable opinion of him. The question after his second impeachment was whether he could ever run again. He spent months in the wilderness, out of office and locked out of his favourite social media networks, Twitter and Facebook.
15:14 Speaker 05 Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the social media giant's decision to cancel Donald Trump Trump's account was based on his use of the platform to incite violent insurrection. Joe Rogan, who by this stage had been promoted from being the UFC's sideline reporter to being its chief commentator, talked on his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, about the importance of an investigation into the Capitol riot. But the January 6 thing is important, and one of the reasons why I think it's important because it highlights the reasons why a guy like Donald Trump is so [bleep] dangerous. Is because a guy can incite a bunch of morons to do something really [bleep] stupid. People were also just generally losing interest in Donald Trump. The number of people searching his name on Google collapsed.
15:59 Speaker 05 His phone stopped ringing. Apart from an appearance at a conservative political conference surrounded by diehard fans, he fell out of the spotlight. It's hard to fathom now, but for the first six months of 2021, Donald Trump just kept a really quite a low profile. But then in July, UFC president Dana White said something during a podcast interview with former UFC fighter Mike Swick.
16:24 Speaker 03 So you said there's going to be a long list of celebrities coming to the actual UFC fight. Can you list any or name any?
16:30 Speaker 04 Bieber's coming, Machine Gun Kelly and Megan Fox. Trump is coming.
16:35 Speaker 03 Oh, cool.
16:38 Speaker 05 Trump is coming.
16:39 Speaker 04 He and I have been friends for for over 20 years. I was in Cabo a couple of months ago and I got the call that he wanted to attend the fight.
16:48 Speaker 05 White said that Trump would be sitting with him ringside rather than in a private box.
16:52 Speaker 04 He's not hiding in a box somewhere. But he does. That's not his style.
16:56 Speaker 05 On the day of the fight, Dana White and Donald Trump entered side by side.
17:03 Speaker 05 There were some cheers, some boos, some USA chants. Dana White told TMZ that he was thrilled.
17:11 Speaker 04 The entire arena gets up on their feet. The whole place stands up.
17:17 Speaker 04 Extremely positive reaction to. Extremely positive.
17:20 Speaker 05 Joe Rogan, who just a month earlier had been talking about how dangerous Trump was, now talked about how excited he was to meet the former president during the event.
17:29 Speaker 03 I should have got a selfie with him. Missed opportunity. It was very weird. When he walked in though, I'm telling you, man, they cheered the out of him.
17:35 Speaker 05 It seems that Trump was pleased with his reception too, because he started regularly attending UFC events and doing long-form interviews on UFC-connected podcasts.
17:44 Speaker 00 We're at Mar-a-Lago. Can't even believe this is happening. We got Donald Trump.
17:48 Speaker 05 It's my honour, my honour. You come highly recommended by Dana White. To Dana White, this was a way of repaying Trump for helping the UFC when they were at their lowest. White was now helping his friend while he was at his lowest.
18:04 Speaker 04 That guy's been a friend of mine for 20 years. He's one of the most stand-up, solid dudes that I've ever met in my life. If he gives you his word, done.
18:15 Speaker 05 After the Capitol riot, Trump still retained a large base of support. His favorability rating never dropped below 33%. But you can't win an election with 33% support. And that's why the UFC fanbase was so important. Trump saw it as a way to claw his way back to 42 to 45% support, which is where he'd need to be to get back into office. And that's because the UFC was home to an untapped demographic: politically disengaged young men. These aren't people who would necessarily have voted against Donald Trump. They're just people who wouldn't have bothered to vote at all. As Trump began his campaign to regain the White House,
18:57 Speaker 05 finding new support among young men was key to his strategy. So when it came to the Republican National Convention in 2024, when Trump had to pick someone to introduce him for his big speech, accepting the party's nomination, there was only one guy he wanted.
19:15 Speaker 04 Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I am Dana White. I am the CEO and President of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
19:23 Speaker 05 After introducing himself, he read out a text Trump had sent him after he agreed to do the speech.
19:29 Speaker 04 Dana, I'm so honored that you will be doing the introduction at the National Republican Convention. Think of it as the biggest fight you ever had, a fight for our country and even the world.
19:42 Speaker 05 White spent five minutes shouting about how great a guy Trump was.
19:45 Speaker 04 I'm in the tough guy business, and this man is the toughest, most resilient human being that I have ever met in my life.
19:53 Speaker 05 As the election reached its final stages, Trump received an even more significant boost.
20:00 Speaker 01 Just came over the wires that Joe Rogan just endorsed me, is that right? Thank you, Joe. That's so nice.
20:10 Speaker 05 By this stage, Rogan's podcast was the most popular podcast in the world.
20:14 Speaker 06 The Joe Rogan Experience.
20:16 Speaker 05 He invited Trump on for an interview just days before the election. All right, we're rolling. Good to see you, sir. Let's go. Here we go. During the three-hour chat, they discussed the early days of the UFC. It was banned from cable because of Budweiser and John McCain, and you could only get it on direct TV.
20:34 Speaker 01 And then I came along and I gave him the sights.
20:37 Speaker 05 You did, and he loves you for that.
20:39 Speaker 01 And he never forgot it.
20:40 Speaker 05 He loves you for that. Trump said Dana White paid him back by supporting him during his darkest days in 2021.
20:45 Speaker 01 When I wasn't exactly in vogue. Dana, they called him, he said, he's the greatest guy, there's nobody like him. He said, I'll never say anything bad about that guy.
20:55 Speaker 05 Two weeks after Trump sat down with Rogan, he won the 2024 election, a win that was at least partially thanks to a strong turnout of young, white, male voters.
21:08 Speaker 05 Trump's favorability rating stayed around the 45% mark for the first few months of his second presidency, as he announced a blitz of policies. Tariffs would fix the economy. Iran's nuclear weapons sites were obliterated. Doge was cutting government waste. Things were looking pretty good. He and Dana White decided that they would hold a victory lap.
21:30 Speaker 01 We're gonna have a UFC fight. We're gonna have a UFC fight. Think of this on the grounds of the White House.
21:37 Speaker 05 But that was mid-2025. By the time the actual event was held in June 2026, Trump's favorability rating was again declining rapidly, dipping down to around 40%. Now, we all know why that was. The US has launched military strikes on Iran, Yemen, Nigeria, and Syria. Supply shortages and price spikes caused by conflict in the Middle East. Donald Trump fired another salvo in his ongoing trade war. He's lying. He's gone back on what he promised. No more foreign wars. The polling shift against him has become particularly sharp among young men. The young men who carried him into office in 2024. The young men who make up the vast majority of the UFC's audience.
22:22 Speaker 05 The interesting thing here is that, in the eyes of the public, the UFC and Trump are now permanently linked.
22:31 Speaker 05 They've gone hand in hand for a long time. He helped them, they helped him. But now, as Trump and Dana White stood together on the south portico of the White House, as jets screamed overhead, as the final notes of the Star Spangled Banner echoed across the south lawn, it's clear they are in this together.
22:59 Speaker 05 It was once possible for the UFC's brand and Trump's brand to be separate entities. One could pull the other up. But now their brands seem permanently entwined. So what happens to Dana White's empire if Trump's brand continues to slide? It's something that other brands should probably consider as well. Mark Zuckerberg, who once banned Trump from Facebook for using the platform to incite violent insurrection, was in the front row of the UFC event at the White House. When Donald Trump took office for a second time, many companies across the US were quick
23:40 Speaker 05 to bend the knee, hoping to leverage connections with Trump for financial gain. The question those companies have to ask themselves now is, what will that association cost them in the long run? This episode of If You're Listening was written by Cara Jensen-McKinnon and me, Matt Bevan. It was produced by Adair Shepherd. Supervising producer is Cara Jensen-McKinnon. In next Thursday's episode, the US and Iran are on the verge of signing some kind of deal to end the war they've been fighting since the end of February.
24:22 Speaker 05 One of the conditions of the deal is an end to hostilities in Lebanon. The thing is, the US and Iran aren't directly involved in those hostilities. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu isn't a signatory to the deal, and yet he's shown that he's willing to continue fighting in Lebanon even if Donald Trump tells him not to. So what is going on in Lebanon? What is Bibi Netanyahu hoping to achieve there? And how will he react to this apparent deal? That's next week. I'll catch you then.
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