The White House is set to a host an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event next year as part of 4 July celebrations in the US to mark the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding.
The octagon cage fight event was announced by UFC boss Dana White, whose friendship with the president dates back to the early 2000s when Trump hosted some of the first ever UFC events at his business properties.
“It is definitely going to happen,” White told CBS Mornings.
White said he planned to meet with the president and his daughter Ivanka at the end of the month to finalise the plans. A White House official confirmed the event to the BBC.
It will mark the first time a UFC fighting competition would be hosted at the White House.
It’s unclear where the event would be hosted. UFC fights typically draw tens of thousands of people and are held in large arenas, with the sports trademarked eight-sided octogen cage in the middle.
“When he called me and asked me to do it, he said: ‘I want Ivanka in the middle of this,'” White said of his discussions with Trump.
“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 had teased the idea of hosting a fight at the White House during an event last month in Iowa.
He indicated that there were ideas to build a cage for the fight on the grounds of the White House and suggested the event could host up to 25,000 people.
“We’re going to have a UFC fight, think of this, on the grounds of the White House,” Trump said at a 4 July Salute to America event in the state. “We have a lot of land there.”
He told supporters at the event, which he said would kick of a year of celebrations for the nation’s 250th birthday, that national parks and historic sites across the US would also host special events.
The UFC fight is the latest move by Trump to place his mark on the White House.
He has made renovating the entire complex of the White House a priority for his second term. So far, he’s redecorated the Oval Office with gold decor, paved over the grass lawn in the Rose Garden, erected two large flagpoles on the north and south lawns, and announced plans to build a $200m (£151m) new ballroom in the East Wing.
Last week, he walked on the roof of the West Wing, saying he was looking at “another way to spend my money for this country”.
The plans for the fight come shortly after Paramount, which owns CBS, announced a seven-year, $7.7bn deal to stream UFC fights.
The Trump administration recently approved a heavily scrutinised merger between Skydance and Paramount, which included promises and commitments by the companies to the administration before it was approved.
By BBC News
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