[[link removed]]

PORTSIDE CULTURE

HOW THE UFC WENT MAGA  
[[link removed]]


 

Jacob Debets
April 23, 2025
Jacobin [[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ MMA used to be home to oddballs unified by a love of beating each
other up inside cages. But since Donald Trump’s first presidency,
the UFC has rebranded the sport as a refuge for the “anti-woke
sports fan,” while breaking unions and censoring the me _

President Donald Trump prepares to watch an Ultimate Fighting
Championship match with UFC CEO Dana White and Elon Musk at the Kaseya
Center on April 12, 2025, in Miami, Florida. , (Joe Raedle / Getty
Images)

 

In the lead-up to the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event in
Miami on April 13, an undercard fight drew an unusual level of
attention.

The fight, which pitted Bryce Mitchell, a featherweight ranked
thirteenth in the UFC, against unranked prospect Jean Silva, was
largely indistinguishable from the hundreds of low-profile
[[link removed]] UFC
contests broadcast from a near-empty Las Vegas event space week to
week on ESPN+. The reason this bout generated outsize attention was
that earlier this year Mitchell had revealed he held a number extreme
far-right views, which included sympathy for Adolf Hitler and
Holocaust denial.

“I honestly think that Hitler was a good guy,” Mitchell said
during a ninety-minute podcast in January, the debut episode of
his _ArkanSanity_ show. He praised Adolf Hitler for trying to
“purify” Germany by expelling “greedy Jews” and dismissed the
Holocaust as fake.

Mitchell’s comments were roundly condemned
[[link removed]] by UFC president Dana
White as “beyond disgusting” shortly after they caused an outcry
on social media. But despite having broad powers under the
standard-form UFC contract to terminate or suspend him, the promotion
declined to take any disciplinary action against the fighter and later
decided to match Mitchell up in a high-profile pay-per-view fight.
White cited “free speech” as the grounds for his inaction. On
Piers Morgan’s _Uncensored_
[[link removed]] podcast. he made the
case that “hate speech is the most important speech to protect.”

White’s claim is especially unconvincing because, since its
founding, the UFC has hardly been what could be described as a
champion of freedom of speech. Moreover, the UFC’s hypocritical
approach to free-speech issues over the two decades since its founding
bears a remarkable resemblance to the doublespeak of the second Donald
Trump administration. Like Trump, the UFC has deployed lofty rhetoric
against “anti-woke censorship” while using repression and
censorship against its ideological enemies.

The UFC Has Been a Trailblazer in Silencing Dissent

The UFC’s refusal to censor Mitchell stands in glaring contrast to
the promotion’s historically iron-fisted attitude toward journalists
and critics who speak inconvenient truths, or whose conduct interferes
with the promotion’s commercial interests and reputation.

As partially chronicled
[[link removed]] by _Sports
Politika_’s Karim Zidan earlier this year, the UFC has been
extraordinarily trigger-happy when it comes to media members who’ve
refused to toe the company line.

This practice stretches back to the mid 2000s, not long after White
(bankrolled by billionaire casino moguls Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta)
assumed the role of president and part-owner of the UFC promotion
after buying it from the ailing Semaphore Entertainment Group. Back
then, mixed martial arts (MMA) had yet to achieve acceptance in the
mainstream sports-entertainment world. It wasn’t even the premier
destination for fighters and fans; Japan’s PRIDE Fighting
Championship held that distinction. In a brazen attempt to stop
nascent MMA websites and publications from providing coverage to the
competition, the hypersensitive White liberally threatened to revoke
press credentials in retaliation against journalists who refused to
focus their writing primarily on the goings-on within the UFC.

This evolved to instituting lifetime bans against veteran MMA
journalists who weren’t content to operate as appendages to the
promotion’s public relations arm_. Full Contact Fighter_ editor
Joel Gold was the first to be shown the door, which White allegedly
explained was due to him giving PRIDE too many front pages
[[link removed]]. _Sherdog_’s
Josh Gross was next to be blacklisted after he turned down a role as
editor of UFC.com circa 2005. Loretta Hunt, also a reporter
for _Sherdog_, was subject to the same treatment after she reported
that the promotion had attempting to circumvent dealing with
fighter-managers by revoking their backstage credentials in 2009.
And _Bleacher Report_’s Jonathan Snowden was exiled for writing an
exposé on the UFC’s highly restrictive fighter contracts in 2013.

These were not isolated instances, nor were they confined to an era in
which the sport was still fighting for cultural legitimacy. In 2016,
the UFC infamously attempted to blacklist popular MMA media
personality Ariel Helwani. Helwani had built an enormous online
following for his _MMA Hour_ YouTube show, which provided
overwhelmingly positive coverage of the organization. But he ran afoul
of the UFC when he reported, ahead of the organization’s own
announcement, that Brock Lesnar, a professional wrestler and former
MMA fighter, was planning a return to the octagon.

Helwani was ultimately reinstated after fan backlash, but less
prominent (and more critical) voices were not so lucky. Writers like
Zidan, who has consistently produced critical reporting on the UFC,
including about its relationships with foreign dictators
[[link removed]],
is banned to this day from receiving media credentials for live UFC
events and alleges the UFC has gone to extreme lengths to obstruct his
reporting, including when he was doing so as a representative for
the _New York Times_. Other critics of the UFC’s business
practices, like twenty-year MMA media veteran Luke Thomas, have spoken
about the “profound” harm that the UFC has done to his career in
retaliation for his reporting.

A Free Press — UFC Style

The UFC’s repressive tactics have not just been deployed in reaction
to criticism but have been proactively used to keep the media in line.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the promotion required fighters and
media members to sign sweeping liability waivers
[[link removed]] that
included nondisparagement terms preventing participants in UFC events
from criticizing the promotion’s health and safety protocols or lack
thereof.

The promotion also released video packages attacking journalists who
criticized the organization for continuing to hold live sporting
events during the pandemic, circumventing stay-at-home orders and in
defiance of the broader sports and entertainment ecosystem, which
largely went into hibernation to stop the spread of the virus.

Building on these practices, today the promotion curates its press
pool so that it overwhelmingly consists of sycophants, influencers,
and other media “personalities” (some of whom are directly paid
by [[link removed]] the
UFC). These individuals are under no illusion that their roles are
restricted to churning out promotional content rather than ask even
mildly critical questions. Hardly the conduct of an organization that
prioritizes the “marketplace of ideas” above all else.

The Anti-Woke Octagon

The UFC has only become more iron-fisted in its treatment of the media
in recent years. However, in tandem with its embrace of Donald Trump
and the MAGA movement more broadly, the promotion has become more
forgiving of certain kinds of speech and behavior that formerly would
have led to fighters being disciplined or “cut” from its roster.

Whereas the promotion had previously done little to differentiate
itself from major sports leagues in its response to athlete
misconduct, this changed during President Trump’s first
administration. Between 2016 and 2020, the UFC positioned itself as a
refuge for the “anti-woke” sports fan. But prior to then, the
organization actively investigated misdemeanors and suspended or
terminated the contracts of fighters who had committed domestic
violence, breached the UFC’s code of conduct, or even
made offensive jokes
[[link removed]] on
Twitter.

Suddenly former NFL star Greg Hardy, who’d been run out of the
league for serious instances of domestic violence, was being given the
red-carpet treatment as he transitioned from football to fighting in
the UFC’s heavyweight division. Overtly jingoistic and hateful
rhetoric espoused by then top welterweight and Trump cheerleader Colby
Covington toward his Brazilian and African American opponents
was suddenly
[[link removed]] a
selling point of his fights, rather than an embarrassing distraction.

A race to the bottom ensued. Fighters like Sean Strickland embraced
extreme and hateful rhetoric
[[link removed]] against
female fighters and the LGBTQ community more generally during
interviews and on social media, en route to becoming an unlikely UFC
title holder and fan favorite.

The UFC’s performative free-speech posturing, just like Trump’s,
is a con. It’s not about principles — it’s about power.

In this new environment, a culture emerged in which it was justified
to ignore domestic abuse and rape. Video footage of White slapping
[[link removed]] his
wife at a Mexican nightclub during a 2022 New Year’s Eve party, or a
jury verdict last November that UFC star Conor McGregor had sexually
assaulted
[[link removed]] a
woman in 2018, had little effect on the careers of either. This
culture of rampant disregard for sexist violence set the stage for
Mitchell’s fight at UFC 314.

Union Busting and Freedom of Expression

The UFC has been highly selective in its choice of which kinds of
speech it chooses to protect. While Covington was headlining cards and
describing Brazilian fans as “filthy animals,” the promotion was
actively suppressing the unionization efforts being pursued by its
fighters. Leslie Smith, then ranked in the top fifteen of the
organization’s female bantamweight division, was released
[[link removed]] from
her contract in 2018 following her very public effort to organize the
UFC’s roster and petition the National Labor Relations Board for a
union election and a determination that UFC fighters should be
classified as employees rather than independent contractors. Kajan
Johnson, who organized alongside Smith, was let go the same year,
despite possessing a winning record (four wins, three losses) in the
UFC’s hypercompetitive lightweight division.

The UFC has also done more than perhaps any other combat sports
organization in history to suppress fighters’ freedom of expression
via the extraordinarily restrictive standard-form contract.

In its early days, the MMA was a delightfully weird melting pot of
athletes and fighting cultures, with events often showcasing unique
walkouts [[link removed]] and
personalized fighter apparel. But some years after the UFC
consolidated the majority of the industry under its banner (including
by buying, and then shuttering, PRIDE), it controversially forced its
fighters to start wearing UFC-provided uniforms, homogenizing a sport
that had previously boasted novelty as one of its selling points.

This has made the UFC an unconscionable amount of money by funneling
sponsorship and advertising revenue to the promotion’s head office
and out of athletes’ hands. But it’s also made it far harder for
fighters to express themselves through their craft or publicly
identify with causes or issues they care about. This has extended to
the UFC instituting, and then reversing, a ban on fighters displaying
their national flags in 2022–23 after Russia invaded Ukraine. When
the policy was reversed however, it conspicuously excluded
[[link removed]] Palestinian
champion Belal Muhammad, whose UFC.com profile was the only one which
didn’t have a flag attached to it (this was eventually fixed after
Muhammad complained about the omission on social media).

Once again, fighters and issues on the left of the political spectrum
have been muzzled, whereas those on the Right have been given much
greater latitude to enjoy the protections the UFC claims it stands
for.

A Blueprint for MAGA

The UFC’s virtue signaling on the sanctity of free speech while
routinely censoring athletes, media, and other stakeholders does not
take place in a vacuum.

The same event where Mitchell fought — and, gratefully, was choked
unconscious — played host to President Donald Trump and a coterie of
subordinates who have been pursuing a frontal assault
[[link removed]] on
the United States’ First Amendment rights while claiming to do the
opposite. This includes Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)
head Elon Musk, who has suspended or shadow-banned left-wing users on
X/Twitter with abandon since purchasing the platform in 2022;
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is currently leading the State
Department’s effort to revoke the visas of hundreds
[[link removed]] of
international students studying in the US as punishment for engaging
in pro-Palestine political activism; and FBI director Kash Patel, who
has vowed to use the law enforcement agency to harass and prosecute
Trump’s political enemies. Trump himself has spent the past few
weeks attempting to seize and reshape cultural and legal institutions
— universities, law firms, the judiciary, the media — that do not
share the worldview of his supporters.

None of this is accidental. UFC boss Dana White has spent years
greasing the wheels of this movement — stumping for Trump at the
Republican National Convention, sharing the stage with him on Election
Night, and plugging him into the manosphere podcast circuit. For his
trouble, he now sits on Meta’s board and presides over a combat
sports empire where dissent is punished and hate gets a push
notification.

The UFC’s performative free-speech posturing, just like Trump’s,
is a con. It’s not about principles — it’s about power. And
while the Bryce Mitchells of the world are given a mic and a platform,
those who speak truth to that power are left fighting for air.

Share this article

Facebook  Twitter  Email

Contributors

Jacob Debets is a Melbourne-based lawyer and writer. He is currently
cowriting a book about the Ultimate Fighting Championship with John S.
Nash.

* Subscribe [[link removed]]
* Donate [[link removed]]

Our new issue, “Progress,” is out now. Subscribe
[[link removed]] to our print edition at
a discounted rate today.

* UFC
[[link removed]]
* MMA
[[link removed]]
* Dana White
[[link removed]]
* MAGA
[[link removed]]
* Donald Trump
[[link removed]]
* Free Speech
[[link removed]]
* Ultimate Fighting Championship
[[link removed]]
* mixed martial arts
[[link removed]]
* anti-woke
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit portside.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 



########################################################################

[link removed]

To unsubscribe from the xxxxxx list, click the following link:
[link removed]