Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / WTF? Gladiator Battles on the White House Lawn: How MMA & the Manosphere Took Over America (& the White House)

Transcript

WTF? Gladiator Battles on the White House Lawn: How MMA & the Manosphere Took Over America (& the White House) · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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  Get a humans, welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas. Are you excited? Are you counting
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  down the minutes until Sunday night when the south lawn of the White House will erupt
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  with an ultimate fighting championship? They have constructed a 90 foot high cage arena
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  in which the series of MMA fights will take place at the behest of the President of the United
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  States. How did we get here? What exactly is UFC? How did one individual, by the name
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  of Dana White, turn a really lawless cage match fighting competition over the past quarter
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  of a century from a fringe thing that wasn't even allowed on pay-per-view cable to such a mainstream
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  event that Donald Trump is hosting it on the White House lawn? Sean Gregory is the man with the
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  answers. He's a senior sports correspondent at Time Magazine and he has a recent cover
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  story about Dana White, the man's trajectory, his relationship to Joe Rogan, his relationship
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  to Donald Trump, and what exactly the UFC tells us about the manosphere, politics, and culture at
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  large. I hope you enjoy as much as I did the one the only Sean Gregory.
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  Sean, Dana White calls what's about to happen on the south lawn of the White House, the most
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  historic sporting event in history. What is the case for that? The understatement is not Dana White's
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  strong suit at all. I think what he's saying is because it's at the White House, it's naturally
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  the most historic sporting event ever. That's his case. It's going to be a big deal. It's going to
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  be talked about hyped and watched. I think back to the Miracle on Ice in the United States when
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  the United States beat the Soviet Union in 1980 at the Winter Olympics, probably the most famous
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  sporting moment in American history when the Soviets were professionals. They had their red
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  army. They never lost in hockey. Back then, the Americans were all college kids at the height of
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  the Cold War. And, you know, Al Michaels on ABC saying, do you believe in miracles? Yes. I mean,
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  that's historic. So, you know, I remember, Bull, I think when you say something is going to be
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  historic sporting a moment, that happens after the fact, right? Like something amazing happens.
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  There's an upset before you label it that. But I think what Dana's getting at is just the mere fact
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  that it's on, you know, the South lawn of the White House and the history of the South.
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  How did this happen? Why is there a huge event on the South lawn of the White House for the
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  250th anniversary of the United States? And why is it UFC? What is UFC? What are we doing?
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  Well, that's totally fair questions. That's so let me backtrack a little bit to why this has happened.
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  This is happening and it goes back. It really goes back to when Dana White as a in his early to
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  mid 20s moves back to Las Vegas where he grew up for part of his childhood and went to high school for
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  most of his high school years and was kind of banging around the boxing business and the fight
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  management business in Vegas, something he, you know, wanted to get in on and he starts to realize
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  that boxing is a little, maybe a little, but is dog by corruption, boxing in the late 90s,
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  early 2000s and still now to a degree has all these sanctioning bodies. There's no like
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  unification really and an organization to boxing. And so he knew he wasn't going to be able to do that
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  for boxing, but he saw this thing called the Ultimate Fighting Championship UFC, which was of
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  a kind of barnstorming organization founded in I believe was 1995. I might go back to 1992 and
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  it was actually founded and it was no holds bar cage fighting, right? There were really kind of
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  no rules, no way classes and was this somewhat of a freak show and they played at smaller venues
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  and cable carriers wouldn't carry it because it was so violent and it was so violent that politicians
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  got involved. John McCain, the late Senator of John McCain ran for president in the United States
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  in 2000 called it human cock fighting. So once he labeled it human cock fighting, it was kind of
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  blacklisted in a way, but then away and just to clarify, I mean, you write that not only did
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  cable not cover it, you couldn't even order it on a pay per view like you might have, you know,
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  you might have a pornographic movie available for to pay for on a hotel menu, but they would not
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  stoop to putting UFC on and fast forward to today and, you know, CBS, the oldest, most conservative
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  television network in America is airing it to hundreds of millions of people. It's kind of
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  amazing. And so, you know, who is Dana at this time? He's just a young entrepreneur once like
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  this entrepreneur, you know, a young kind of boxing, you know, the boxing business has managers,
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  it has trainers, you know, he wanted to just be, you know, you could own a gym, you can be a
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  promoter like he was kind of finding his way. And he happened to be friends with a casino air,
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  named Lorenzo Fertita, they went to high school together, his dad ran a casino out in Vegas,
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  Lorenzo's the son and their brother and his brother Frank is involved taking over the casino
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  operations. So they have some money and Dana convinces them that they should buy the near banker
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  up UFC because they can organize and kind of save the sport. They could ruin, they can get it in
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  bigger venues. He just believed that boxing was ripe for competitors, actually. And thought the
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  violence of it was a was an appeal, you know, a lot of boxing bouts go 10 rounds and you know,
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  guys are leaning on each other like MMA fights get bloody, you know, they can get really bloody and
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  really gnarly. Hey humans, just jumping in here quickly to make sure you're aware that this is just
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  of mind expanding bullshit free uncomfortable conversations back to the show.
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  Can we just just pause for terminology here? You're talking about UFC and you're talking about
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  MMA. Yeah, what what's the difference for sure. So UFC is the promote is it or organization that
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  promotes and organizes and markets a sport called MMA mixed martial arts. So UFC is actually not
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  a sport. It's actually become so synonymous with with MMA that people call it UFC that kind of
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  interchange. But yeah, it's like the NBA is a basketball organization. UFC is an MMA organization.
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  Right. It's as if we called soccer FIFA or something like that. Exactly. Exactly. That's exactly.
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  It's become so synonymous with the sport that that's kind of yeah, we call it sometimes like
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  call and soccer FIFA great great comparison and and so the UFC was was at the time introducing
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  basically this crazy form of MMA in cages around the United States. And day and night
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  by see organized gets the fatigue is to buy the organization for $2 million, which is nothing even
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  at the time is not that much for a whole sporting outfit. And they put Dana White in charge
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  as president and the first fight that he runs as president UFC 30, which so they number each big
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  event. And an event has it's a card. It's like a card of seven fights with a main event. And
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  then there's even preliminary fights beforehand. So the numbered events as they call them. It was
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  the 30th in the history of the organization Dana White's first as president. And where do they
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  have it at the Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City owned by Donald Trump. And so Trump gave them a
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  venue at the time was a big deal because you know at the time Trump wasn't in his 80s you know
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  the 80s he was known as he was kind of this legendary business person right people didn't know a lot
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  of the you know what's going on on the surface. I remember growing up in New York City and Donald
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  Trump was basically we talk about you know FIFA being synonymous with soccer Donald Trump was
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  synonymous for kick growing up in New York City with rich with wealth you know he was wealth
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  it personified and that was the legend around Donald Trump. And and so Dana as Dana White says at
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  the time 2001 he wasn't at his 80s peak and he had had some bankruptcies in the 90s but he was
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  still way more better known and respected than this fighting organization MMA which wasn't allowed
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  on pay per view in a lot of places next to pornography. So for the UFC for to get an event at the
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  Taj Mahal Atlantic City because Atlantic City casino was a huge deal. And do we know why Trump did it
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  at the time. I think I think he well you know he loved fights like he had a lot of fights at that
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  place at a lot of his property. So he was big in the boxing game and in the and he took a chance
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  on this MMA thing you know you have to these these casinos you need you have these space you'll
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  put something in it you'll put anything in it in it in a way. So he took a bit of a chance though
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  because people didn't really you know it was outlawed in a lot of states I guess it wasn't
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  banned in New Jersey at the time because he could stage this this fight and he went there and
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  apparently loved it and met Dana White and then the friendship we can go the peaks and valleys
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  of not really valleys but you know where that friendship has gone and how it's escalated at times
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  but they met that night in 2001 hit it off kind of and through the years the short story is through
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  the years you know as UFC ascended Donald Trump would send nice notes to Dana White encouraging him
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  and then the friendship went to another level before the 2016 election when Dana was asked to be
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  on the speaker line up with Donald Trump and then fast or 2024 or he introduces Donald Trump at
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  the Republican national convention he could have picked his son he could have picked his daughter he
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  could have picked Jared Kushner he could have picked anybody in the world but he picked Dana White
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  five days after the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania and you know he wins the election
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  Dana White's called on stage and we could talk about how Dana White helped him in the election
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  I mean you also make the point that the Dana White was instrumental in just calling Joe Rogan
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  over and over and over and trying to get to throw his support behind Donald Trump I mean say what
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  you want about Trump he knows his his audience and he knows the crowd and and picking Dana White
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  instead of his daughter to introduce him at the Republican national convention is probably a
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  masterstroke in terms of appealing to the people who ended up being the voters who came over to him
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  young men of various ethnicities yeah not just not just the traditional buttoned up Republican
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  middle age white dude right and Dana White was pretty adamant going into that campaign saying
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  you can't just be on Fox News you can't just be speaking to the middle aged white dude
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  you have to get the young guys and the way to do that is through some of the podcasters that he met
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  with that all kind of lean UFC and no Dana White and have relationships with him and the big
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  Kahuna was Dana White brokering this meeting this three hour interview with Joe Rogan. Rogan
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  for years wouldn't put him on the podcast you know Dana White says you know Rogan's more you know
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  left leaning was was kind of a Democrat supported Bernie Sanders supported Bernie Sanders that's
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  what he said that's a big yeah Dana White supported Bernie Sanders and so he didn't want to
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  quote unquote platform Trump and Dana you know I'm sure there are a lot of factors Joe Rogan
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  didn't speak for the piece I'd be interested in his perspective on it but the way Dana tells it
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  is he kind of you know worked and worked and kind of warmed down and and then you know he endorsed
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  Donald Trump publicly and Donald Trump on the elections so you can connect the dots how you want
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  as as Donald Trump said in our interview like it didn't it only helped pretty much
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  and Dana White was quote very important to him getting back to office
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