The White House Will Celebrate America’s 250th Birthday With a UFC Cage Fight

The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) will hold the first-ever professional mixed-martial arts fight at the White House during America’s 250th birthday celebration next year. UFC CEO Dana White confirmed on Tuesday that the fight would take place on July 4, 2026, the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. “It is definitely going to happen,” he told the hosts of CBS Mornings. White said he already spoke with President Donald Trump, a long-time UFC fan and friend of the CEO, and will meet with Trump and his daughter Ivanka Trump later this month to continue planning the event. “When he called me and asked me to do it, he said, ‘I want Ivanka in the middle of this,’” White said of the President, on CBS Mornings. “So Ivanka reached out to me, and her and I started talking about the possibilities, where it would be and, you know, I put together all the renderings.” Trump told his supporters at an event in Iowa last month that he wanted to have a UFC fight at the presidential residence. “We’re going to have a UFC fight, think of this, on the grounds of the White House. We have a lot of land there,” Trump said at the time. “Dana’s going to do it. Dana’s great. One of a kind.” It is not yet clear which UFC fighters will participate in the showdown. White told The Associated Press Tuesday that it was too early to talk about the possible main event. Longtime UFC star Conor McGregor, who last fought in 2021 and visited the White House in March, expressed interest shortly after Trump spoke about a potential fight last month. “I would be honoured! Count me in!” McGregor wrote on X. Since his last fight, McGregor was found liable for sexually assaulting a woman in a hotel room in 2018 in a civil case last year. Trump has attended UFC fights during both his first and second terms. In April, the President went to a fight in Miami with several members of his Administration, including then-head of the Department of Government Efficiency Elon Musk, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The fight will be part of what the White House has said will be “a full year of festivities” for the nation’s 250th birthday. To plan the celebration, Trump formed a task force, called the “Salute to America 250 Task Force.” “Task Force 250 invites citizens to have a renewed love of American history, experience the beauty of our country, and ignite a spirit of adventure and innovation that will raise our nation to new heights over the next 250 years,” the website reads.