logo
UFC chief Dana White reveals date of the first proposed MMA fight at the White House

UFC chief Dana White reveals date of the first proposed MMA fight at the White House

Daily Mail​a day ago
Dana White has revealed the date of the anticipated UFC card on the White House lawn, July 4, 2026, which will line up with the 250th birthday for the United States.
The UFC President confirmed the date of the White House fight card on Tuesday, one day after the company's historic deal with Paramount was announced.
With the new home for the leading mixed martial arts promotion in tow, White simultaneously announced the Independence Day brawls will air live on CBS.
'It is definitely gonna happen,' White said. 'I talked to him last night, him being the president, and I'm flying out there at the end of this month and I'm going to sit down and walk him through all the plans and the renderings.
'We're going to start deciding what he wants and doesn't want. But yeah, it's definitely going to happen.'
Trump first announced his intentions to host the UFC at the White House for America's 250th birthday last month as part of his celebrations for Congress passing his 'Big Beautiful Bill'.
pic.twitter.com/ouUazpvThG
— Videosareforever99 (@videosaregood) August 12, 2025
The announcement drew plenty of criticism to mix barbarism with patriotism and also support from some in the MMA community.
UFC legend Jon Jones made a stunning U-turn on his retirement from fighting after the White House announcement was made, claiming he has re-entered the company's drug-testing pool.
In June, White announced Jones would not defend his heavyweight championship and had retired, coming as a major disappointment to fans amid demand for a heavyweight title showdown with Britain's Tom Aspinall.
Now, Jones claims he has taken a huge step towards a comeback after re-entering the testing pool - though it remains to be seen whether that is definitely the case - while also hinting that he could return on a potential card at the White House.
Jones' status of getting back into the Octagon has not been cleared up in the weeks since.
'Fighting at the White House?' Jones posted on X. 'Just re-entered the testing pool, that lasted for about two weeks. Figured we'd keep everyone's options open.'
It was at a UFC card at Madison Square Garden where Jones last fought, a knockout victory over Stipe Miocic last November, where he celebrated the victory with Trump after mimicking his signature dance.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Trump names Sylvester Stallone and Kiss for Kennedy Center Honors and says he'll host awards show
Trump names Sylvester Stallone and Kiss for Kennedy Center Honors and says he'll host awards show

The Independent

time27 minutes ago

  • The Independent

Trump names Sylvester Stallone and Kiss for Kennedy Center Honors and says he'll host awards show

As the new chairman of the Kennedy Center, President Donald Trump added a highly personal stamp to this year's announcement of the recipients of the annual honors, whom he named as country music star George Strait, 'Rocky' actor Sylvester Stallone, singer Gloria Gaynor, the rock band Kiss and actor-singer Michael Crawford. Instead of the Kennedy Center revealing the names through a press release as usual, Trump announced the honorees himself during a Wednesday press conference at the site, where he was flanked by American flags and photo stands for each of the entertainers that were initially covered by red drapes. Unlike in his first term, when he didn't even attend the honors ceremony, he announced that he would be hosting it later this year and that he had been deeply involved with the selection process. He also suggested he might choose himself for a future award. The spectacle marked a new era for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which Trump has taken over by installing himself as chair and replacing the board of trustees with loyalists. He has even hinted he'd like to see the venue renamed the Trump/Kennedy Center. Trump has made revamping the Kennedy Center — and what he calls its 'woke' agenda — the center of an ongoing push to overhaul such cultural institutions as the National Endowment of the Humanities and the Smithsonian museums. A bipartisan history The Kennedy Center Honors were established in 1978 and have been given to a broad range of artists. Until Trump's first term, presidents of both major political parties traditionally attended the annual ceremony, even when they disagreed politically with a given recipient. Prominent liberals such as Barbra Streisand and Warren Beatty were honored during the administration of Republican George W. Bush, and a leading conservative, Charlton Heston, was feted during the administration of Democrat Bill Clinton. At least some of this year's winners have a history of backing Trump. Stallone is a prominent supporter who has called Trump 'the second George Washington' and was named by the president, along with Jon Voight and Mel Gibson, as a Hollywood special ambassador. Founding Kiss member Ace Frehley endorsed Trump in 2020, calling him 'the strongest leader we've got.' Meanwhile, fellow Kiss musician Paul Stanley has often criticized the Republican president, notably his resistance to accepting his election loss to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. 'After numerous audits, debunked claims of rampant voter tampering, dead people voting & the countless cases thrown out by Trump appointed judges & others… When is not getting the hoped for result accepted?? Biden won," Stanley tweeted at the time. All of the nominees have had substantial, even iconic, careers. Stallone's portrayals of the underdog boxer Rocky Balboa and Vietnam veteran John J. Rambo are fixtures in popular culture. Strait's dozens of chart-topping hits, including 'Check Yes or No' and 'I Cross My Heart,' have led to his nickname the King of Country Music. Few bands have sold more records or more famously covered their faces in makeup than Kiss, members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Crawford is a celebrated stage actor who won a Tony for his starring role in 'The Phantom of the Opera,' and Gaynor is a leading star from the 1970s disco era whose 'I Will Survive' is a feminist anthem. Breaking with longtime tradition, none of the honorees was from the fields of dance or classical musical. This year's Kennedy Center Honors ceremony will take place on Dec. 7 and will air on CBS and stream on Paramount+. A personal approach Historically, a bipartisan advisory committee selects the recipients, who over the years have ranged from George Balanchine and Tom Hanks to Aretha Franklin and Stephen Sondheim. Trump said Wednesday that he was 'about 98% involved' in choosing the honorees and conferred with such handpicked Kennedy Center officials as Ric Grenell and Sergio Gor. He said he 'turned down plenty' of names, saying those individuals were 'too woke' or too liberal. He described the artists he announced on Wednesday as 'great people.' Besides naming himself chairman and remaking the board, Trump has indicated he'd take over decisions regarding programming at the center and vowed to end events featuring performers in drag. The steps have drawn further criticism from some artists. In March, the producers of 'Hamilton' pulled out of staging the Broadway hit musical in 2026, citing Trump's aggressive takeover of the institution's leadership. House Republicans added an amendment to a spending bill Trump signed into law in July to rename the Kennedy Center's Opera House after first lady Melania Trump, but that venue has yet to be renamed. Maria Shriver, a niece of the late President Kennedy, a Democrat, has criticized as 'insane' a separate House proposal to rename the entire center after Trump. ___

Anti-Trump internet star's attempt to debunk DC crime spiral ends in disaster
Anti-Trump internet star's attempt to debunk DC crime spiral ends in disaster

Daily Mail​

time27 minutes ago

  • Daily Mail​

Anti-Trump internet star's attempt to debunk DC crime spiral ends in disaster

A viral internet account known for posting about Washington DC was ridiculed online after its attempt to prove ' crime isn't that bad' backfired massively. Washingtonian Problems, an anti-MAGA account that focuses on DC's issues, asked its followers to post positive traits about the ailing city to 'push back' against Trump. However, the account was quickly inundated with comments from locals that only served to prove that Trump 's law enforcement takeover is warranted. The X account wrote: 'Hey DC, let's push back against the negative narrative about our city. Share why you love our beautiful home and help show the world the real DC.' Testimonials came in thick and fast from people who had been the victims of serious crimes - who were happy that the National Guard are being deployed. 'I've been held up at gunpoint, had my car broken into 3 times, and had my bike stolen. My credit card has been skimmed too many times to count and I can't send my kids to public school here because they're a joke,' wrote Bret Manley, a children's book author based in the D.C. area. Multiple people wrote that they or people they knew have been robbed or mugged in front of police officers who declined to intervene. 'My car was broken into. One friend had a car stolen from in front of his place, another was carjacked at gun point. I've had to assist someone who was shot while I was just trying to drunkenly make my way home from a bar,' another person wrote. 'F*** you. Thank god for the new enforcement.' Pictured: The account, Washingtonian Problems, wrote this on Monday hoping to spread positivity about the nation's capital Grayson Quay, a conservative writer and former editor at The Daily Caller, wrote about a time he was assaulted on the Metro. 'It was really cool when a guy headbutted me on the metro after I asked him to stop blasting music through his phone speakers,' he wrote. 'And then there was the time a bum spat on me for no reason.' Tim Kennedy, a producer for outlet The Daily Signal, recalled a quadruple shooting at King Street Oyster Bar in August 2024 that killed two people. 'The D.C. chief of police blamed the restaurant for not properly locking up their patio at night,' Kennedy wrote. 'No, this actually happened.' The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) released a statement at the time saying that the restaurant, which was closed at the time of the shooting, failed to secure its patio and allowed people to gather. 'Without preventative measures, the open patio contributed to the group establishing themselves and continue to grow, leading to the gun violence that resulted in four people being shot, two of which are deceased, and significant property damage,' the department said in a statement. Other commenters talked about the mental toll of living in a city with high crime, including conservative political strategist Sarah Selip. 'As a woman #TheRealDC means carrying pepper spray day and night. Not wearing headphones after dark. Taking off your engagement ring when walking the dogs,' she wrote. The more constructive replies to Washingtonian Problems accused the account of being tone deaf and unwilling to acknowledge reality. 'It's a beautiful city but it's not negativity to admit that the crime is out of control,' one person wrote. The same day Washingtonian Problems made this post attempting to 'push back against the negative narrative about our city,' a man was shot to death in D.C.'s Logan Circle neighborhood. As of August 2025, violent crime has plummeted by 26 percent since last year, according to the MPD. Homicide is down 11 percent, while sex abuse offenses have been cut in half. However, there is potentially reason to doubt these statistics, since MPD placed 3rd District Commander Michael Pulliam on leave last month over accusations of manipulating crime data. D.C. Police Union Chairman Gregg Pemberton told NBC 4 he doesn't believe there has been as large of a crime drop as local officials have claimed. 'There's potentially a drop from where we were in 2023. I think that there's a possibility that crime has come down. But the department is reporting that in 2024, crime went down 35 percent -- violent crime – and another 25 percent through August of this year,' Pemberton said. 'That is preposterous to suggest that cumulatively we've seen 60-plus percent drops in violent crime from where we were in '23, because we're out on the street. We know the calls we're responding to,' he added. Since Trump took over the MPD and mobilized the National Guard, the White House claimed that more than 100 people have been arrested.

Insider shares insights on Trump's diplomatic tactics
Insider shares insights on Trump's diplomatic tactics

Daily Mail​

time27 minutes ago

  • Daily Mail​

Insider shares insights on Trump's diplomatic tactics

As crunch talks were underway between the United States and China in Donald Trump 's first term, Xi Jinping 's negotiating team used every trick in the book to unsettle the American side. Shortly before a key meeting took place, as the U.S. team was about to set out from their embassy in Beijing , the Chinese delivered a follow-up to a carefully prepared negotiating document for the talks. It was in Chinese, without an English translation. Then, when Trump's negotiating team got to the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse for the meeting, they discovered there were one too few chairs for them. One of the U.S. negotiators had to leave the room. 'We're sitting in a secure facility, a team of tens of people that have come over from the U.S., and we looked at the document they provided. It was in Chinese, it was not at all responsive to the draft we sent before travelling to Beijing,' Mitchell Silk, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, told the Daily Mail. Silk shared his insights on Trump's diplomatic tactics ahead of the president's historic showdown with Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday. 'They completely disregarded our document. They delivered up something that they wanted to use for the negotiations,' Silk said of the Chinese ahead of the 2019 summit with Trump. In his upcoming book 'A Seat at the Table,' Silk, who speaks two dialects of Chinese, recounts how he quickly translated the document in the car en route to the talks with Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin. When they got there Mnuchin made it clear the Americans weren't meeting for the sake of it. 'He was just very short and very simple, he was perfectly gracious in, thanking the Vice Premier for his kind and warm welcome. He acknowledged receipt of the document, and he just took our document, waved it around, and said, thank you but I think we're going to be using our document for these discussions, and that's exactly what we did,' said Silk. 'There was no funny business. There were no games. We were there to do business, and we weren't having any of it.' He added :'If it had been another administration, another time, and this is probably what was happening in these endless, meaningless meetings prior to Trump, somebody would have said, well, you know, maybe we should we use their document? There was none of that. Psychologically, we weren't having it, and we made that very clear.' During the talks, which led to Trump's first trade deal with China in 2020, every little detail of protocol had been worked out over preceding weeks, including who was going to sit where. But when everybody sat down, right before the then Chinese Vice Premier Liu He spoke, it was clear that there was one chair missing. Someone on the American side had to leave the room, and one of the dedicated career civil servants took the fall. Later, outside of the main room, Silk engaged with the head of protocol from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It emerged that the Chinese felt snubbed because the Vice Premier had not been granted an Oval Office audience when he was in Washington just weeks prior. 'Our understanding was the chair was their way of getting back at us, rather petty,' said Silk. Ultimately, the head of the Chinese central bank, Yi Gang, was walking by and Silk told him: 'Mr. Governor, when you are next in Washington, please join me at my house for a dinner. I will put out a lavish spread for you with the finest of drink and the finest of food, and you can have as many chairs as you like.' The American team got their chair back. It was yet another example of the psychological games that Trump will face in his upcoming tariff negotiations with the Chinese. This week, President Trump extended a trade truce with China for another 90 days, delaying a dangerous showdown between the world's two biggest economies. The previous deadline was set to expire at 12:01am on Tuesday. Had that happened the U.S. could have ratcheted up taxes on Chinese imports from an already high 30 percent, and Beijing could have responded by raising retaliatory levies on U.S. exports to China. Key has been the use of executive power to deploy tariffs as leverage. 'He's come out swinging, using tariffs imposed under executive order, so presidential authority, as an economic weapon, and he started that literally in the first days of the administration,' said Silk. 'The heavy and the quick action certainly rattled the markets, but I believe that the president was playing for long-term economic leverage.' The tariffs have been 'much sharper, they're more targeted, and they're higher than before.' Behind that was a strategy to 'clear the decks' of other trading partners, securing quick deals with them, so that he could focus on China. 'My take is that the initial move was designed to get initial action out of a certain set of countries (including the UK, EU, Japan and South Korea), and push a second group of countries further down the road, try to pick them off one by one.' He added: 'And then you've got the most difficult countries, and the number one, without a close second in that group, is China.' Realistically, the China negotiation is probably a 12-to-18 month process, he said.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store