WASHINGTON — Craig Borsari has been tasked by his boss to develop some pretty wild ideas during the more than two decades since he started working at a fledgling Las Vegas company that has now become a global brand.
Only once did he think the proposal might be a joke.
It was about a year ago when Dana White popped into his office and told Borsari, now the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s chief content officer, to start workshopping ideas to stage a fight card at the White House.
“Even after he left my office, I was still thinking it couldn’t really be reality,” Borsari recalls. “It was a few days later when he told me we had a call with the White House to discuss the event that it became really real, really fast.”
Thousands of man hours dedicated to planning, logistics, security and contingency scenarios ensued and will culminate with Sunday’s planned UFC Freedom 250 fight card on the South Lawn.
The affair represents many things to many people.
A cold open that will start the Paramount+ broadcast refers to it as “the most historic sporting event of all-time.”
It is the signature event in a summer of celebration for the 250th anniversary of the United States in the nation’s capital, taking place steps from the residence of President Donald Trump on his 80th birthday.
That alone has made the very existence of the card a political football, dominating the local news cycle.
Stripped of politics and symbolism, it is undoubtedly a tremendous sporting moment with seven high-level fights, including two championship bouts, taking place on one of the most magnificent stages ever constructed for professional competition.
But those other factors can’t be erased. A for-profit sporting event taking place on such hallowed ground is incredibly divisive and has proven to be a target for political opponents of the president. It has been the subject of lawsuits, a reported FAA complaint and endless mockery on late-night television and even mainstream news programs.
But at its core, it is also a crowning moment for a Las Vegas company that has soared to unprecedented and unexpected heights and will now step onto a global stage.
“When you really think about 2001 until now, tell me a bigger sports story or a crazier sports story than the rise of the UFC,” said White, president and chief executive officer of the UFC.
Humble beginnings
White encouraged his casino magnate friends from high school, Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, to buy the financially distressed and legally challenged UFC for $2 million in 2001.
He later famously asked them to sink about 25 times that amount into producing and distributing a reality show, even paying to put it on the air. The success of the reality show “The Ultimate Fighter” is often credited with turning the fortunes of the company and launching it into the stratosphere of major sports in America. The group eventually sold the UFC for more than $4 billion in 2016.
But there were other moments in those early days that would help build the relationships that have put the organization squarely within the halls of world power.
One of the biggest early challenges for White after the original purchase was finding a venue that would host mixed martial arts fights despite the sport being banned in most jurisdictions.
He found a willing partner in Trump, who then owned casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
The first two live events under White and the Fertittas took place at Taj Mahal in February and May of 2001.
Trump, who is now an avowed fan, was impressed with the toughness of the athletes. White marvels at how Trump didn’t just do a deal, but showed up to support the event.
When the UFC moved to the larger Continental Airlines Arena last year, Trump still attended.
A close friendship was forged that has only grown stronger as the pair soared in their respective careers, despite Trump once being affiliated with a rival startup mixed martial arts brand called Affliction.
White now calls Trump one of his closest friends. He says they speak regularly on the phone, and White introduced Trump at the 2024 Republican National Convention. White also spoke at the 2016 convention when Trump was first nominated for president.
“Arenas around the world refused to host our events,” White said at the time. “Nobody took us seriously — except for Donald Trump. Donald was the first guy that recognized the potential that we saw in the UFC and encouraged us to build our business . . . before it was popular.
“Trump is a fighter, and I know he will fight for this country.”
Trump has attended several live UFC events, often taking advantage of a largely manosphere-adjacent audience that greets him with a hero’s welcome quite opposite from the jeering boos that marked his appearance at the NBA Finals last week.
It was at one of those shows where Trump, soaking in the massive energy of a UFC live show, leaned over and told White they should find a way to put a cage on the White House lawn.
Several weeks later during a July 2025 rally in Iowa, Trump revealed plans for the first time.
“We’re going to have a UFC fight — think of this — on the grounds of the White House,” he said. “We have a lot of land there.
“Dana is going to do it. Dana is great. One of a kind. Going to have a UFC fight — championship fight, full fight — like 20, 25,000 people, and we’re going to do that as part of 250.”
The final venue will seat about 4,300 people, but that original vision is about to become a reality less than a year later.
Still fighting
White and Trump share an affinity for pushing back against the standards and norms of how things are typically done.
It’s a major factor in why both are as controversial as they are successful and probably why they get along so well.
Opposition to the White House event continued right through the week.
Hosting a for-profit sporting event on the White House grounds, White said they fully expected to get slapped with the lawsuit that was filed last week and rejected by a federal judge Friday, clearing the way for the event to move forward.
The suit cited not only the conflict of interest of Trump having invested in the UFC’s parent company, but the use of federal land for profit.
“This isn’t a case about a sporting event, it’s about corruption, as a handful of people and companies stand to profit off our public monuments,” Brendan Ballou, the CEO of Public Integrity Project, which backed the suit, said in a statement Friday.
The argument was shot down on several grounds, including how close to the event the suit was filed.
White pushed back on the notion the event is a partisan one. The broadcast will feature vignettes between each fight that tell the story of America, and sources indicate the idolatry of Trump will be kept to a minimum.
“It’s impossible to make some people believe it’s not political,” White said. “It’s the 250th birthday of America. In my hotel, there is a Washington magazine of all the events going on between now and the Fourth of July in Washington celebrating the 250th birthday of America.
“I wonder how many people are going to try to sue those or say those things shouldn’t happen. It is what it is. I don’t give a (expletive) about any of this stuff. We’re going to put on an incredible event that will literally never be matched on Sunday.”
Borsari adds he believes the UFC would have jumped at the same opportunity had a Democrat been in office.
“I think the way we look at this is that we have an unbelievable, incredibly unique opportunity to celebrate this country and our athletes, and that’s what we plan to do on Sunday,” he said. “This is a special time in this country to celebrate 250 years.
“And we have a lot of production assets to really lean into that narrative while we also have an incredible platform now for our athletes to showcase their skills, and we’re excited to do that as well.”
Crowning achievement
There have been many moments over the quarter century White has run the UFC, starting in a series of offices on Sahara across from Palace Station and now from a massive global headquarters along the 215 in the southwest, that the company has hit once-unthinkable milestones.
Securing the opportunity to stage a fight on the grounds of the White House has to be at the top.
“It’s one of the president’s favorite sports,” White said. “That helps.”
He cites as one of his proudest moments how during COVID as they became the first American sport back in action with full attendance after staging fights for months at the height of the pandemic at their Apex facility in Las Vegas.
White is also particularly proud of having eight of the top-10 gates at Madison Square Garden after investing so heavily in just getting the sport legalized in New York is also near the top of his list.
But this is different.
Even the famed Ellipse on the White House grounds was used for the pre-fight weigh-ins.
“They were going to do some type of celebration around the White House for America’s 250th birthday and we as the UFC, me and my employees and the fighters, and we as fans are very lucky it ended up being the UFC,” he said. “It’s going to be a very unique experience. Even the 85,000 people on Saturday and 300,000-plus people applied for the tickets to be over at the Ellipse. Even that is going to be an amazing experience.
“If you look where we started with incredibly humble beginnings and now to be where we are as part of the 250th anniversary celebration on the White House lawn is absolutely insane.”
Borsari is still blown away by what he has experienced since he was hired in 2005 as one of fewer than 20 employees at the time.
“To see the growth in the past 20 years has been remarkable,” he said. “Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be putting on something like this where we not only have all the eyeballs in America focused on what we’re doing, but really this is a global event that has intrigue across the globe.
”It’s a bit of a surreal experience to be on the lawn this week, looking over my shoulder and seeing those iconic pillars of the White House. We’ve been pinching ourselves all week.”
Still, there is an understanding none of it can be truly celebrated or appreciated until the event has taken place and is successful.
Even then, it will just be time to start looking for the next challenge.
“There are people like Dana who are never complacent, never playing on his heels, always charging forward,” Borsari said. “It’s a unique attribute he carries that allows him to look for challenges that most people would consider impossible. He’s the leader of this company and he’s the visionary. Who knows where he’s going next?
“That’s the fun part of this. When you feel like you’ve assembled such an exceptional team of people to pull this kind of event off, you want to test it and see how far we can push this thing. How big a challenge can we take on? That’s the culture around the UFC is to push, and I feel like we have the best team in the world to do it.”
He’s certainly not going to assume White is joking the next time he’s presented with what sounds like a far-fetched idea.
Contact Adam Hill at ahill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AdamHillLVRJ on X.
