--:-- Noel King: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Noel King.
--:-- Luke Thomas: Thanks for having me on the show.
--:-- Noel King: Today, we're talking about the Ultimate Fighting Championship, or the UFC. Luke Thomas is a combat sports analyst for CBS Sports. He's also a podcaster and YouTube personality. Luke, let's start with the basics. What's it like to go to a UFC fight?
--:-- Luke Thomas: It's going to be loud. It's going to be dark. And it's going to be bright and shiny at the same time. It's going to have a strobe light kind of effect at times. You're walking into a place with predominantly young males, somewhere between 18 and 49 years old. You're going to see a series of combatants taking turns walking out to the octagon and competing in this bout.
--:-- Noel King: I've never been to a UFC fight. So, tell me, what's the atmosphere like?
--:-- Luke Thomas: It's like a softer version of the Mos Eisley Cantina from Star Wars. You're going to see extremely loud, extremely in-your-face kind of production and sound design. But the UFC fans absolutely love it, and obviously, the product is doing quite well.
--:-- Noel King: How well is it doing? I mean, it depends on how you want to evaluate it. The UFC was sold in 2016 to basically Endeavor. Is this the happiest birthday yet after making $4 billion? It doesn't suck. There are current estimates that put it in the $10 billion range as well.
--:-- Luke Thomas: I mean, again, some of this is speculative. So, it's not nearly as big as that. It is growing in parts of Southeast Asia. It's already been big to an extent in Japan. It's growing throughout Europe and sort of Middle East, North Africa as well.
--:-- Noel King: Tell me how the UFC has evolved over the years up to the present day.
--:-- Luke Thomas: The story basically begins in Denver in 1993. Eight of the deadliest fighters in the world will meet in a no-holds-barred combat to determine who is the ultimate fighting champion. And at this time, you have every different kind of guy you can imagine, this giant sumo guy, this kickboxer guy from various parts of Europe. No one really knew who they were, but it was all designed to be an infomercial for Gracie Jiu-Jitsu.
--:-- Noel King: The Gracie family is the most important family in the history of martial arts. There was a Gracie family that had adapted a style of judo from Japan. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is largely a part of this one dynamic, incredible family. And if you look at that family, all the fucking champions, Hoist, Horian, Hickson. And they had kind of adapted it to make it use for anybody of any different kind of size.
--:-- Luke Thomas: They had to develop the concept of cooking your opponent. You know, all that wasn't in Japanese jujitsu. It wasn't in judo. And so they sent out one of their family members, Hoist Gracie, who was not the biggest guy in that family, who was not the best scrappler in that family. And what they thought they could do was if we put him in all of these other matches against all these other guys, what people are going to see is that Gracie Jiu-Jitsu is the dominant style of fighting, period.
--:-- Noel King: And of course, Hoist Gracie really dominated. Hoist is the ruler. He is the greatest champion on the planet. Unbelievable. Those blows were devastating. And that's really the genesis of how it all kind of got started.
--:-- Luke Thomas: What it ultimately did is it sent forward and again, it was in a really rough state with very minimal rules, if at all. For example, today, hair pulling is banned, eye gouging is banned, fish hooking is obviously banned, attacking the clavicle is banned. You could do basically all of that stuff or at least a big majority of it back in 1993.
--:-- Noel King: And over time, this begins to begin this really appealing form of combat where guys who used to be Division I or Olympic alternate wrestlers, they wanted to get on the action and they had some success. So you had this sort of really interesting amalgamation of different people wanting to try this and it gained popularity, but it also had notoriety as well because it was unsanctioned, because the rules really weren't established.
--:-- Luke Thomas: But you might recall in 1996, this is when Senator John McCain called it human cockfighting. I mean, I've seen people repeatedly getting smashed in the face with a guy sitting on top of them. That's not a sport.
--:-- Noel King: And that really sent it to a pretty terrible place. It got kicked off of pay-per-view in many cases. Eventually, a lot of states didn't even want anything to do with it. They would shut it down last minute. And in January of 2001, the guys who originally founded the UFC, they threw in the towel. They just couldn't take it anymore.
--:-- Luke Thomas: So they sold it for $2 million to Dana White, Lorenzo, and Frank Fertitta. Those were two casino magnates from a pretty important family in Las Vegas. And those guys didn't have success either. They were constantly having problems, constantly having issues with their shows.
--:-- Noel King: In fact, when they first got off the ground, those initial shows were a disaster. But in 2005, The Ultimate Fighter hits. What we knew we had to do was to get on television. And reality shows were big. So the thing was, we're going to put fights on TV, but we're going to put it on through reality.
--:-- Luke Thomas: The world got to see really unique people doing a really crazy thing at the height of the reality TV show boom. And it worked for the casual audience who had maybe heard of UFC. This put a brand new face on it. This was something that they could see the individual human stories. They got to watch them fight in this house in this sort of like in-house tournament.
--:-- Noel King: And it eventually culminated with a live fight on Spike TV. Tonight, it's Stephen Bonner and Forrest Griffin for a UFC contract. It was what we would call now a viral sensation, a slobber knocker if ever there was one.
--:-- Luke Thomas: What is keeping these guys going? Bloodied, battered, but neither can be beaten.
--:-- Noel King: Yeah, how well is it doing? I mean, it depends on how you want to evaluate it. The UFC was sold in 2016 to basically Endeavor. Is this the happiest birthday yet after making $4 billion? It doesn't suck. There are current estimates that put it in the $10 billion range as well.
--:-- Luke Thomas: I mean, again, some of this is speculative. So, it's not nearly as big as that. It is growing in parts of Southeast Asia. It's already been big to an extent in Japan. It's growing throughout Europe and sort of Middle East, North Africa as well.
--:-- Noel King: Tell me how the UFC has evolved over the years up to the present day.
--:-- Luke Thomas: The story basically begins in Denver in 1993. Eight of the deadliest fighters in the world will meet in a no-holds-barred combat to determine who is the ultimate fighting champion. And at this time, you have every different kind of guy you can imagine, this giant sumo guy, this kickboxer guy from various parts of Europe. No one really knew who they were, but it was all designed to be an infomercial for Gracie Jiu-Jitsu.
--:-- Noel King: The Gracie family is the most important family in the history of martial arts. There was a Gracie family that had adapted a style of judo from Japan. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is largely a part of this one dynamic, incredible family. And if you look at that family, all the fucking champions, Hoist, Horian, Hickson. And they had kind of adapted it to make it use for anybody of any different kind of size.
--:-- Luke Thomas: They had to develop the concept of cooking your opponent. You know, all that wasn't in Japanese jujitsu. It wasn't in judo. And so they sent out one of their family members, Hoist Gracie, who was not the biggest guy in that family, who was not the best scrappler in that family. And what they thought they could do was if we put him in all of these other matches against all these other guys, what people are going to see is that Gracie Jiu-Jitsu is the dominant style of fighting, period.
--:-- Noel King: And of course, Hoist Gracie really dominated. Hoist is the ruler. He is the greatest champion on the planet. Unbelievable. Those blows were devastating. And that's really the genesis of how it all kind of got started.
--:-- Luke Thomas: What it ultimately did is it sent forward and again, it was in a really rough state with very minimal rules, if at all. For example, today, hair pulling is banned, eye gouging is banned, fish hooking is obviously banned, attacking the clavicle is banned. You could do basically all of that stuff or at least a big majority of it back in 1993.
--:-- Noel King: And over time, this begins to begin this really appealing form of combat where guys who used to be Division I or Olympic alternate wrestlers, they wanted to get on the action and they had some success. So you had this sort of really interesting amalgamation of different people wanting to try this and it gained popularity, but it also had notoriety as well because it was unsanctioned, because the rules really weren't established.
--:-- Luke Thomas: But you might recall in 1996, this is when Senator John McCain called it human cockfighting. I mean, I've seen people repeatedly getting smashed in the face with a guy sitting on top of them. That's not a sport.
--:-- Noel King: And that really sent it to a pretty terrible place. It got kicked off of pay-per-view in many cases. Eventually, a lot of states didn't even want anything to do with it. They would shut it down last minute. And in January of 2001, the guys who originally founded the UFC, they threw in the towel. They just couldn't take it anymore.
--:-- Luke Thomas: So they sold it for $2 million to Dana White, Lorenzo, and Frank Fertitta. Those were two casino magnates from a pretty important family in Las Vegas. And those guys didn't have success either. They were constantly having problems, constantly having issues with their shows.
--:-- Noel King: In fact, when they first got off the ground, those initial shows were a disaster. But in 2005, The Ultimate Fighter hits. What we knew we had to do was to get on television. And reality shows were big. So the thing was, we're going to put fights on TV, but we're going to put it on through reality.
--:-- Luke Thomas: The world got to see really unique people doing a really crazy thing at the height of the reality TV show boom. And it worked for the casual audience who had maybe heard of UFC. This put a brand new face on it. This was something that they could see the individual human stories. They got to watch them fight in this house in this sort of like in-house tournament.
--:-- Noel King: And it eventually culminated with a live fight on Spike TV. Tonight, it's Stephen Bonner and Forrest Griffin for a UFC contract. It was what we would call now a viral sensation, a slobber knocker if ever there was one.
--:-- Luke Thomas: What is keeping these guys going? Bloodied, battered, but neither can be beaten.
--:-- Noel King: Luke, you've been talking about the early days of the UFC. Let's talk about the present day. The UFC has become a mainstream sports league. It's got a huge following. It's got big fights. It's got big stars. But it's also got a reputation for being a bit rough around the edges. A bit unsavory.
--:-- Luke Thomas: Yeah, I think that's true. I mean, the UFC has always been a bit of a wild card. It's always been a bit of a rebel. And I think that's part of its appeal. But at the same time, it's also got a reputation for being a bit of a boys' club. A bit of a fraternity.
--:-- Noel King: And that's where Donald Trump comes in. The former president has been a big fan of the UFC for years. He's been to several events. He's even given a speech at the Republican National Convention in 2016.
--:-- Luke Thomas: Yeah, that's right. And I think that's interesting because, you know, the UFC has always been a bit of a counter-cultural thing. It's always been a bit of a rebel. And I think that's part of its appeal. But at the same time, it's also got a reputation for being a bit of a boys' club. A bit of a fraternity.
--:-- Noel King: And that's where Donald Trump comes in. The former president has been a big fan of the UFC for years. He's been to several events. He's even given a speech at the Republican National Convention in 2016.
--:-- Luke Thomas: Yeah, that's right. And I think that's interesting because, you know, the UFC has always been a bit of a counter-cultural thing. It's always been a bit of a rebel. And I think that's part of its appeal. But at the same time, it's also got a reputation for being a bit of a boys' club. A bit of a fraternity.
--:-- Noel King: So, let's talk about the relationship between Donald Trump and the UFC. Sam Egan is a reporter and documentary producer who's written about Donald Trump's relationship with the UFC.
--:-- Sam Egan: Yeah, so their relationship starts in 2001. UFC had just been acquired by Dana White and the Fertitta brothers, and this UFC was in sort of a pretty sad state. It was being sort of like regulated out of existence. So we had a hard time finding venues, and Trump literally called us. Trump stepped up and offered to host two events, UFC 30 and 31, at Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City in 2001.
--:-- Noel King: That's right. And I think that's interesting because, you know, the UFC has always been a bit of a counter-cultural thing. It's always been a bit of a rebel. And I think that's part of its appeal. But at the same time, it's also got a reputation for being a bit of a boys' club. A bit of a fraternity.
--:-- Sam Egan: Yeah, so we get there, greatest setup for us. He did this whole thing for us, showed up to the first fight, and was there till the last fight. And then Trump actually steps away and starts his own MMA promotion in 2008 called Affliction MMA. It only lasts for a few events, but he kind of tries to step into the MMA game himself, which I think speaks to the fact that he is earnestly a combat sports fan.
--:-- Noel King: And then it kind of falls under the radar, I think, really until 2016, when Dana White is one of the first people to publicly endorse Trump.
--:-- Sam Egan: Yeah, that's right. And I think that's interesting because, you know, the UFC has always been a bit of a counter-cultural thing. It's always been a bit of a rebel. And I think that's part of its appeal. But at the same time, it's also got a reputation for being a bit of a boys' club. A bit of a fraternity.
--:-- Noel King: And in that speech, he's very careful, as he still is largely, you know, to sort of very delicately tiptoe around the nuts and bolts of the politics stuff and to speak to Trump the person.
--:-- Sam Egan: For over 15 years, Donald Trump has been a loyal and supportive friend. And I know that if I needed Donald, he would be there for me just like he was when I first met him.
--:-- Noel King: And talks about Trump bringing the UFC out of sort of out of the ashes and helping it rise to be like this massive sports business.
--:-- Sam Egan: That's incredible. So really early on in 2016, when there is a lot of skepticism about Donald Trump, the candidate, Dana White is fully behind him as a friend. And talking about him in the way that Trump does love to be talked about, which is he's a businessman. He did the business thing.
--:-- Noel King: Exactly, yeah. So Donald Trump, close listeners of the show may recall, was in fact elected president. And then what happens with the relationship?
--:-- Sam Egan: There's a few appearances here and there, but I think it really, really picks up in 2019. The event that sticks out in my mind was UFC 244. That was in November of 2019. And just a few weeks before that, Trump had been booed at the World Series.
--:-- Noel King: I don't know if you remember that. He was sort of famous and booed at the World Series. Booed in his own backyard.
--:-- Sam Egan: That was the reception at Nats Park when President Trump showed up on the Jumbotron at Game 5 of the World Series. And he makes an appearance at a UFC event shortly after. And, you know, it gets the whole, the full treatment. And the cameras pan to him and fighters are cheering his name and talking about him in their post-fight interviews.
--:-- Noel King: I think we recognize, no matter what your views are on Trump as a president, you guys are a bad motherfucker, man.
--:-- Sam Egan: And that starts a bit of a trend. And he continues to appear at events periodically for the next few years. But then in 2023, it really takes off. And by my account, he appeared at three separate events in that year alone.
--:-- Noel King: As I was watching these events, I would notice this feels like a captive campaign stop for Trump. Making his way into the building. One of the bigger mixed martial arts fans I know, President Donald Trump.
--:-- Sam Egan: And that sort of pace and that relationship has continued into this year. He's already appeared at at least one event. And I'm sure there'll be many more in the lead up to the election.
--:-- Noel King: I understand why the UFC appeals to Donald Trump. And I understand why Trump appeals to Dana White. But the UFC is more than Dana White. It is an entire mainstream sports league. What is it about Donald Trump that appeals to the UFC beyond Dana White as a sports league?
--:-- Sam Egan: I think that the UFC has largely achieved regulatory capture around the sport of MMA. At least 90 cents of every dollar spent on the sport of mixed martial arts globally is spent with the UFC. And the relationship with Donald Trump helps them to preserve that vice grip that they have on the sport.
--:-- Noel King: To have a president who is deeply pro-business and in no way antitrust, it would be deeply beneficial to the interests of the UFC.
--:-- Sam Egan: I wonder also about the UFC's politics. Like the NBA, the NFL. They have been they've been initially divided by these incidents like Colin Kaepernick taking a knee or players during players after George Floyd was murdered going on Instagram and making statements.
--:-- Noel King: Has the UFC ever like has it ever kind of done that thing where it sort of seems like it's moving moving left or is it unabashedly right wing?
--:-- Sam Egan: I think that in general, it sort of steers right. I mean, I would say fighting is in no way inherently a conservative sport, but it presents as being about the individual. It's one person competing against one person in a very violent, dominant fashion.
--:-- Noel King: I don't know if you're familiar with active clubs, but there's like a growing neo-Nazi movement that uses MMA to recruit young people sort of into their ranks, using MMA as a sort of backdoor into that.
--:-- Sam Egan: So there's these themes of, in the case of the really, really far right, there's these themes of domination and violence that are like really, really important to those political agendas that are very easily paralleled in MMA, right?
--:-- Noel King: In terms of a more sort of mainstream Reaganomics conservatism, I think that the individual nature of combat sports, I think that this idea of it being sort of sexy and countercultural, right? Like it's not the normal thing to be into.
--:-- Sam Egan: I think that conservatives really want to appeal to the counterculture, especially at this. Like you think about people like Gavin McInnes, right, who I wouldn't call a traditional conservative, of course. But there's this deep desire, like he likes to say that like conservatism is like the new punk, right?
--:-- Noel King: There's this deep desire to appeal to the counterculture. I think MMA is a really, really easy backdoor for that.
--:-- Sam Egan: Tell me about the fighters. What is it about the fighters in MMA, in UFC, that appeals to conservatives, do you think?
--:-- Noel King: They almost take the professional wrestling approach. And some fighters sort of end up having like a personas, if you will.
--:-- Sam Egan: One of the people that comes to mind when you ask this is a guy like Colby Covington, who is a former title contender in the UFC, fought for the title multiple times.
--:-- Noel King: I want to shout out all our first responders on military. Those are the real heroes and celebrities of our country. Also want to shout out Donald Trump. You can delay us, but you can't deny us. He's going to make America great again.
--:-- Sam Egan: And has sort of made his career by presenting as this super hyper MAGA dude in all of his fight promotions. Whenever he's on mic, he's wearing a red MAGA hat.
--:-- Noel King: I'll tell you. You make it so easy. I don't know how to do that. Congratulations. I wanted to watch that fight tonight. Thank you so much, Mr. President. You gave me the dragon energy when you shook my hand on Sunday at your rally.
--:-- Sam Egan: He had a title fight against Kamaru Usman and kept referring to him over and over again as fake newsman. Just doing things sort of like this. Being very open about his politics in a way. I don't even think you see people doing in the NFL or the NBA.
--:-- Noel King: There's fighters like Jorge Masvidal, who is a Cuban-American fighter from Florida, and in 2020 led this bus campaign around Florida called Fighters Against Socialism, which was just a series of pro-Trump rallies.
--:-- Sam Egan: We either re-elect President Trump and keep America great. Amen. Amen. or we let Joe Biden destroy the greatest country the world has ever seen.
--:-- Noel King: There was also Sean Strickland who famously a few months ago got on mic and went on this really, really intense anti-LGBT tirade.
--:-- Sam Egan: You are the definition of weakness. Everything that is wrong with the world is because of fucking you.
--:-- Noel King: Are we going to see headlines after the election that the UFC and UFC fans got Donald Trump elected?
--:-- Sam Egan: I do not think that the UFC will sway the election. It's still significant. He's shown sort of a roadmap for how to appeal to young men that are typically maybe vaguely conservative, but generally sort of apolitical, and particularly young Latino and Black men.
--:-- Noel King: So I think that this is more of a roadmap for how conservatives can continue to make gains and continue to galvanize young male voters in a way that previous Republican candidates have not.
--:-- Sam Egan: And I do think that the UFC is playing a big role in that activation.
--:-- Noel King: Reporter-producer Sam Egan. Today's episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh, a maximalist. It was edited by Lissa Soep. It was engineered by Andrea Kristinsdottir and Patrick Boyd, and it was fact-checked by Laura Bullard. I'm Noel King. It's Today Explained. Thank you.
