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Newsdata · Florida Politics·June 12, 2026Florida StateFederal

The rise of UFC: Dana White’s path from ‘human cockfighting’ to the White House starts with Trump

The South Lawn fights are the pinnacle of the relationship between White and Trump.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The beginning of Dana White and the UFC’s road to the White House can be traced back 25 years to when a fringe mixed martial arts promotion — at the time still unable to shake the “human cockfighting” label applied to the sport years earlier by a U.S. senator — ran a modest event called “Battle on the Boardwalk.”

Making his first appearance as UFC president, White was asked about his goals for the fledging promotion. Sporting close-cropped hair, thinner, dressed in a suit, and using restraint in his words, White still offered a sneak peek of his future bombastic plans.

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Sourced from Newsdata · Florida Politics · indexed by Statura on June 13, 2026. Statura indexes Florida political news and tags it by industry and jurisdiction so government-affairs teams can monitor signal without scanning every outlet by hand. Read the full story at Newsdata · Florida Politics

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