SUNDAY NIGHT SMACKDOWN

UFC Boss Floats Bonkers Prediction About Trump’s Fight Night

Trump’s UFC chief buddy is quite confident about Sunday’s event.

The Ultimate Fighting Championship’s head honcho shared an ambitious estimate about President Donald Trump’s upcoming birthday cage match extravaganza.

Dana White, the president and CEO of the UFC and a longtime Trump ally, appeared in an interview with TNT Fight Sports that aired Monday to discuss the UFC Freedom 250 event, which he anticipates will draw in an unbelievable number of viewers.

“For UFC fans all over the world, this is a very unique experience for everybody,” White, 56, said. “We’re expecting Super Bowl-type numbers for this, for this fight.”

It’s unlikely Sunday’s fight night will achieve White’s generous prediction.

Super Bowl LX, which aired on NBC in February, brought in an estimated 125.6 million viewers, according to Nielsen. Super Bowl LIX, the year before, brought in a record-high 127.7 million viewers.

The UFC at the White House event will stream exclusively on Paramount+, the platform owned by billionaire nepo baby and fierce Trump ally David Ellison. The service has just under 80 million subscribers, according to the company’s latest quarterly report.

The only live sporting event comparable to both the UFC and the Super Bowl was Netflix’s 2024 broadcast of the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson boxing match, which drew an average viewership of 108 million. However, Netflix boasts a subscriber base four times that of Paramount, with 325 million paid memberships.

Earlier in the TNT interview, White described Trump’s birthday bash as a “one-of-one event.”

“Where we came from and how this whole sport started and how it was frowned upon in the United States to now heading to the White House is pretty surreal,” the UFC boss said before praising his soon-to-be octogenarian pal. “And the president of the United States is a huge fight fan.”

Trump helped White bring the MMA competition into the mainstream in its infancy by hosting UFC 30 and UFC 31 at his Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 2001.

Since then, the two have been “very good friends,” according to White.

“Nobody loves the White House more than President Trump does. When you go there and you tour the White House with him, there’s a sense of pride that he has in that place that is... like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” White glazed.

The UFC head said it was Trump’s idea to host an event at the White House. “And I said yes,” White said.

“He’s the type of person—he doesn’t say something and not do it," White added about Trump. “And literally from that night on, the next day, he reached out and said, ‘Let’s start figuring this out.’”

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Vic VerbalaitisNight Breaking News Reporter

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