Sunday night saw the most iconic, unique event in UFC history as seven spectacular bout played out on the South Lawn of the White House as UFC Freedom 250 formed part of the nation’s 250th birthday celebrations with an unforgettable night of fights.
After the action inside the Octagon had concluded, UFC President and CEO Dana White chatted with the assembled media at the post-fight press conference.
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Here’s a recap of some of the key topics covered:
The one-off nature of the event attracted huge attention, including beyond the usual UFC viewing audience, with White revealing that he’d already had a conversation with the higher-ups at Paramount, who were delighted with the numbers they were seeing during the night.
I just got off the phone with David Ellison (CEO of Paramount Skydance), and he's going crazy,” said White.
“Out the gates from the first fight, the fight exceeded all their expectations. I'll let Paramount make their own announcement,, but it was monstrous tonight, monstrous. You don’t get calls from billionaires flipping out too often, so he is extremely excited. I'll let them do their thing.”
Heading towards event time, there were growing concerns that inclement weather would play a disruptive part in proceedings. However, despite reports suggesting storms were on their way, the bad weather stayed away, leaving the event to play out in near-perfect conditions.
UFC FREEDOM 250 REWIND: Results | Scorecards | Bonus Coverage
“I thought the weather was perfect last night. The weather was actually better tonight,” said White. “We’re sweating the storm all day – (it’s) beautiful all day, and then it's looking like from 6pm-9pm there's going to be a storm. And, this is f****** crazy, but the storm literally split and went around the White House! And the breeze was perfect. Just everything. You couldn’t have had a better night – it was absolutely perfect. Just enough wind to keep the bugs off us. All the s*** that I was worried about played out perfectly.
“The production was off the charts. If you look at what we did, we built an arena on the White House lawn – that was amazing. But if you look at what we did at the Ellipse, it's almost more impressive than what we did on the South Lawn.”
The event was a massive undertaking for the UFC team, who worked countless hours to conceive, then execute, the plan for the event. And, while White was clearly proud of his team’s efforts, he also admitted that he wouldn’t be doing another show like this one again.
”What was amazing with this event was that you put together an event where people can't get into it, yet 60,000 people show up to the weigh-ins,” he said. “And, like I said, almost 200,000 people over two days to stand on the grass and watch it on screens, it's incredible. It was an amazing experience. This was a one-of-one (event) that will never happen again. And, for all of us that were involved, from the fighters to my staff to the media to their families and everybody, this was a unique, cool experience.”
When asked if he’d consider running a similar event again in the future, his response was immediate.
“I can't afford it!” he laughed. “There's no f****** way we can do this again! I'll never do the Sphere again, and we'll never do this again.”
White also took the opportunity to pay tribute to his team, who worked in lockstep with the White House staff and the Secret Service to make the event a reality.
“If you look at what we pulled off tonight, I mean, just the security issues that we had, and working with the White House staff, and Secret Service, and everybody was incredible,” he said. “When you look at how smoothly everybody got in tonight. I don't know how it was for you (media) guys, but they did such a great job getting everybody in there, making sure that it was safe. It was very well executed between my staff and the Secret Service. So, I’ve got to thank the White House, obviously the President, and his entire team.”
Following Ciryl Gane’s victory over Alex Pereira for the interim heavyweight title, White was asked whether there could be the chance the UFC books a rematch between Gane and undisputed champion Tom Aspinall for Paris, and turn the event, which is currently scheduled to be a UFC Fight Night show, into a numbered UFC event.
“I’ll try, sir. I’ll try to get that that done for you,” he smiled. “Listen, I get it. I agree with you, it would be big, and we'll obviously do whatever we can to make something big happen, especially in Paris. The fanbase out there is great, and I know that all the live events out there are fun. So, we’ll see what we can do.”
White made clear on numerous occasions that a repeat of the White House event, and even more outdoor shows, aren’t on his wishlist for the future, but he did reveal the possible return of a popular event from yesteryear.
“Well, the President and I are talking about doing a ‘Fight For The Troops’ (event) next year. So, obviously, if you did a ‘Fight For The Troops,’ we'd do all that kind of stuff. We did a lot of them in the past. We used to work with the Fisher family, who were very dialed in with the military and could get things done easily. It's not easy to get things done on military bases and things like that, but when we have the Fisher family, and then obviously the President can make a lot of things happen, so we're talking about doing it next year... He wanted to do it this year, and I said, ‘Sir, I need a year to recover financially from the White House fight, so give me a year!’”
With White’s friendship with President Trump, the event came in for some criticism as being a political exercise, but the UFC President said that couldn’t be further from the truth.
“I love this country, and this event was for America's 250th birthday,” he explained. "There was no political agenda for this event or anything like that. The fact that the President of the United States entrusted me – they could have had anything, they could have put any type of performance on. And like I said, there's tons of things going on in this city up until July 4 to celebrate. I did all the media. We went to New York, I did far-left, I did far-right, I did down the middle, I did it all, and I believe that if you are an American, no matter where you sit politically, tonight was a proud night to just sit around and enjoy the 250th birthday of America. I was just honored to be the person that he trusted to deliver tonight. And I hope everybody, as an American, feels that we did.”
And finally, White spoke about how he hopes that those who were watching the UFC for the first time might now become new fans, as he hinted that his attention is already starting to turn towards UFC International Fight Week next month, and another huge event in Las Vegas.
“We knew leading up to this thing that we were going to pull a massive number on this show and, like I said, on America's 250th birthday, hopefully tonight created some unity,” he said. Even for the people that thought this was going to be some big political statement or something – this wasn't. This was Americans, all Americans, celebrating the birthday. And then for people who tuned in for the first time because it was at the White House, hopefully they liked the sport, they liked some of these guys' stories, and they tune into the next one, because International Fight Week is going to be fun too. Hopefully we created some unity in the country and in the world, and brought in some new fans. I hope that's what we walk away with tonight.”
