{"text":[[{"start":7,"text":"Kourtney Kardashian is staring at her phone, expressionless. She’s wearing an enormous black hoodie and kitten heels, sitting on a folding chair while two men fight inside a cage. Next to her, Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker nods along to the trap music booming through the arena. Neither looks up when the crowd erupts. A few seats away, James Cameron is paying closer attention. In olive cargo pants and a T-shirt, the director of Titanic and Avatar repeatedly gets to his feet for a better look."}],[{"start":38.02,"text":"Across the cage, all I can see of Joe Rogan is his bald head bobbing above the black padding of the octagon, nodding ever so slightly to the beat. Photographers crouch beneath him, poking long white lenses through the chain-link fence. A blonde woman in a black bikini circles the cage holding a giant number 4 above her head, blows a kiss to the camera and walks away."}],[{"start":60.44,"text":"The music stops. Then the men start hitting each other again. Shirtless and barefoot, wearing only shorts and fingerless gloves, they slam each other against the fence. From this close you can hear it: the slapping of flesh carries over nearly 20,000 people screaming behind me."}],[{"start":77.16,"text":"Alexandre Pantoja’s face is suddenly only a few feet away, mashed sideways against Joshua Van’s body and covered in blood. His mouth hangs open around his mouthguard. One eye is swelling shut. Bright-red streaks begin appearing down Van’s back. At first I think they’re scratches. Then I realise it is Pantoja’s blood. In the final round, Van catches Pantoja with a punch that sends him crashing backwards to the mat. No one stops the fight. Van follows him down and punches him in the head again and again. Flecks of blood spatter as the blows land. The pale-blue canvas beneath them is already streaked red, staining adverts for Budweiser and Polymarket."}],[{"start":119.4,"text":"More than 19,000 people are packed into the Crypto.com Arena in downtown Los Angeles to watch this. The building, home to the Lakers basketball team, and a regular stop for pop stars such as Ariana Grande, has broken its record for event revenue tonight, bringing in more than $8mn. The crowd is overwhelmingly male."}],[{"start":140.26,"text":"Earlier that night, another fighter had emerged victorious with his thumb split open. During an interview with Rogan, he held his broken thumb up to the cameras, exposing a bloody red wound with a sliver of white bone visible. Dana White, the UFC’s chief executive, posted a close-up photo of the exposed bone to his Instagram, with the caption: “FIGHT NIGHT!!!”"}],[{"start":162.84,"text":"The Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC, is the world’s biggest mixed martial arts (MMA) organisation. Unlike boxing, the sport allows fighters to kick, elbow and choke each other, even after they’ve been knocked to the ground. A fight can end with a shattered limb or a man unconscious. The sport has been drawing crowds for decades. But lately, a court of celebrities, CEOs and political powerbrokers has assembled around the cage in a fenced-off world of its own."}],[{"start":192.94,"text":"Tonight, Hollywood faces are joined by the billionaire property developer Rick Caruso, Theo Von, one of America’s biggest podcasters, and N3on, a bleach-blond 22-year-old streamer whose Wikipedia page describes him as “controversial”. On other nights, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and David Ellison occupy these seats; so do cabinet secretaries and US senators. President Donald Trump is a regular."}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":219.52,"text":"In the parking garage outside, oversized black SUVs pull up beside a folding table marked “UFC INVITED GUESTS”. Inside, Balenciaga is everywhere, alongside teenagers in vintage Kurt Cobain T-shirts that look equally expensive. At merchandise stands, fans carry away bulging bags. Replica championship belts cost $850."}],[{"start":242.28,"text":"Thirty years ago, all this would have been hard to fathom. Television networks and venues wanted nothing to do with UFC. In more than two-thirds of US states and even on pay-per-view TV channels, porn was not off limits, but the UFC was. Mark Shapiro, president of UFC’s parent company TKO, was an ESPN executive at the time. “There was no way,” he told me. “ESPN and Disney wouldn’t touch it.”"}],[{"start":267.8,"text":"Now, Ellison’s Paramount is paying billions to air UFC. Foreign governments offer financial incentives to lure its fights to their cities. And this summer, for his 80th birthday celebrations, Trump put a cage on the White House lawn."}],[{"start":281.02,"text":"Not everyone who turned up at the White House fight was a convert. One attendee, a longtime Trump ally, told me he is not actually a UFC fan. “It’s pretty brutal, isn’t it?” But when the president invites you, “it’s sort of hard to turn down an invitation”."}],[{"start":297.38,"text":"UFC has become the signature sport of the Trump era. What began as a friendship between Trump, a longtime UFC fan, and White grew into an alliance between a political movement and a multibillion-dollar business. Trump helped bring UFC into the heart of American political power. White, in turn, helped the president reach young male voters."}],[{"start":318.74,"text":"The image of a ruler presiding over violent combat for the entertainment of the masses has obvious historical echoes. Kathleen Coleman, a Harvard classicist, says Roman emperors used the arena to display their wealth and power in different ways. Julius Caesar reportedly disappointed spectators by attending the games but burying himself in paperwork. Augustus knew better: the crowd wanted its ruler to share in the spectacle. Trump, Coleman says, is similarly using the arena to demonstrate his power, but with a caveat. Roman combat was “the regular way of doing things”, she says. “Whereas Trump is trying to shock. And show how his power is unique.”"}],[{"start":357.4,"text":"When UFC first emerged in the 1990s, America was developing a taste for the outrageous. The polished heroes of an earlier entertainment culture were giving way to something louder, angrier and less respectable. James Werme, who worked at WWE before joining UFC in 1995, remembers the period as “the birth of crazy TV”: Jerry Springer and Morton Downey Jr. UFC supplied the most literal version imaginable. “It’s a real fight. People can’t believe what the hell they’re looking at.” Decades later, the shock has largely worn off. “Now, like, crazy TV is a normal Tuesday afternoon,” Werme says."}],[{"start":394.36,"text":"Three days after LA, I’m sitting beside White at a UFC fight in Las Vegas. At 57, he is bald and barrel-chested, wearing a black T-shirt, his thick arms resting on a folding table. A few hundred spectators are packed around the cage, screaming “USA, USA!” so loudly I can barely hear White. “This kid showed up to fucking fight!” shouts the man who Donald Trump has credited with helping him return to the White House."}],[{"start":420.96,"text":"In the autumn of 2020, White was waiting in Las Vegas for the president to pick him up. Trump was campaigning for re-election and was heading to a rally in Arizona. White was due to fly with him on Air Force One. The two men had been friends for decades, dating back to when UFC’s early events were staged at Trump’s Atlantic City casino."}],[{"start":440.56,"text":"Before the flight, White called Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner with an unusual request. He wanted to bring along a group of rambunctious YouTubers called the Nelk Boys. The idea had come from his son, who had recently summoned his father into the movie room at their house to show him one of the Nelk Boys videos. The “boys” were in their early twenties and had built a vast following by filming themselves drinking, partying and performing pranks. “They’re going to be dead when they’re 30,” White remembers thinking as he watched. “But I totally get it.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":471.84,"text":"For several years, White had been telling anyone who would listen that traditional media was losing its grip. “These kids have all the influence now,” he said to his communications chief. He had been trying to make the same case to Trump. Going on Fox News, he told the president, meant speaking largely to people who were already going to vote for him. But the YouTubers could reach a new cohort."}],[{"start":493.72,"text":"Kushner thought it was a “great idea”, but encouraged White to approach Trump directly, according to a person familiar with his thinking. “You’re asking him this one, not me,” White recalls him saying. So White did. The president agreed. A few hours later, White and the Nelk Boys were aboard Air Force One."}],[{"start":510.36,"text":"When he tells me this story at UFC’s Las Vegas headquarters, White reaches for his phone and pulls up a photo. It shows Trump sitting behind a desk aboard Air Force One in his dark suit and red tie, giving a thumbs up. White crouches beside him, grinning. Four young men crowd behind them, also giving thumbs-up signs; two are wearing Trump baseball caps. White remembers the mood changing as they lingered in the president’s office and the Nelk Boys kept filming content to post online. “At one point the president gives me this look like, ‘Are you fucking kidding me right now?’” White says. “‘What the hell’s going on here?’”"}],[{"start":548.84,"text":"Later that day, at the Arizona rally, Trump finished his speech and began walking offstage as “YMCA” played, doing a little dance. Just off the stage, the YouTubers started spelling out the letters with their arms. Trump spotted them and waved them up. Soon they were all dancing beside the president in their suits and red Trump hats, throwing their arms in the air as the crowd cheered."}],[{"start":572.24,"text":"White snaps his fingers as he tells me what happened next. Goosebumps rise on his arms. “It’s the most viral thing on the internet that day,” he says. “[Trump] got it. He understood.” Trump later called White “very important” to his campaign. “I was being interviewed by 20-year-old kids. I’m saying, ‘Where the hell did you meet these people?’”"}],[{"start":591.8,"text":"After that, White says, he no longer had to explain the strategy. He got the president to sit down with the Nelk Boys for a podcast and from then on, he says, he could simply call with more suggestions, like appearing on Theo Von’s show. But there was one person White still could not deliver, the “holy grail” of the podcast universe: Joe Rogan."}],[{"start":611.56,"text":"Rogan had been part of UFC almost from the beginning, working as a backstage interviewer in the 1990s. When White took over as UFC president in 2001, he came across an old videotape of Rogan enthusiastically talking about the sport. “I’m like, ‘This is the guy. I need this guy’,” he says. With the mainstream media largely ignoring UFC, White and Rogan spent years grinding through early-morning radio interviews together to promote it. Two decades later, Rogan had become one of the most powerful figures in American media."}],[{"start":646.16,"text":"“Back in time, the fans were very excited that Joe Rogan was the representative for us to the mainstream,” says Luke Thomas, a longtime combat-sports analyst. “Now I think the roles have reversed. Now powerful entities use Joe Rogan to get to the ordinary people.”"}],[{"start":662.04,"text":"Getting Rogan to agree to have Trump on his show was not straightforward. “I worked for six years to get Rogan to put Trump on,” White told me. The breakthrough, according to White, began with Trump’s daughter Ivanka. She was a fan of Rogan’s podcast, and during a trip to Austin, Texas, asked White to introduce them. White arranged a dinner for Ivanka and Jared Kushner with Rogan and his wife. The couples hit it off. “After that they became friends,” White says. A person close to Kushner confirmed the Texas dinner and the subsequent friendship."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":694.2,"text":"When I ask how Rogan eventually changed his mind about Trump, White smirks. “I know how he changed his mind.” He pauses. “Oh, man. I don’t want to get into all this shit.” Then he does. In White’s telling, getting to know Trump’s family, particularly Ivanka and Jared Kushner, changed Rogan’s perception of them. “You start to realise these people aren’t monsters,” he says."}],[{"start":715.32,"text":"Trump needed little convincing. By 2024, the world White had introduced him to years earlier had become an influential part of politics. He sat with Rogan for three hours, talking about everything from immigration and the election to mixed martial arts fights. For several minutes, the two men talked about UFC like obsessive fans, comparing great fighters and recalling knockouts, broken legs and careers that had gone on too long. Just 12 days before the election, the interview went live on YouTube. Within days, 40 million people had watched it."}],[{"start":748.96,"text":"The White House has seen fighting before. Abraham Lincoln was a formidable wrestler. Theodore Roosevelt boxed there until a blow damaged his left eye, then took up jiu-jitsu, practising with a Japanese master in the East Room. But, planning his 80th birthday extravaganza, Trump had something grander in mind: a 600-tonne, 92-foot-tall steel arch called “the claw” that would hang over an octagon cage."}],[{"start":773.24,"text":"The idea had come to Trump at a UFC fight in November of 2024, just after he won back the presidency. By White’s account, he and Trump were sitting together at Madison Square Garden when the president leaned over. “You know what?” White remembers him saying. “We should do a fight at the White House.”"}],[{"start":791.8,"text":"“Yes, Mr President,” White replied. “Yes, we should.”"}],[{"start":793.24,"text":"I ask White whether he knew Trump was serious. “He’s funny and he’s what I would call a guy’s guy, like a ball-buster,” White says. “But he doesn’t say things that he doesn’t mean and doesn’t do.”"}],[{"start":804.76,"text":"Trump made the suggestion on a Saturday. On Monday, the White House called UFC to begin planning. UFC executives began flying to Washington to survey the South Lawn. Inside UFC’s parent TKO, there was little debate. “We didn’t even have to run a business plan or do the math,” Shapiro told me. “This was an instant yes.” The company expected to lose about $30mn on the event, but regarded the White House gig as a marketing opportunity unlike anything else."}],[{"start":831.88,"text":"The embrace of UFC in DC extends well beyond Trump himself. Senior administration figures including Marco Rubio, Scott Bessent, Robert F Kennedy Jr, Pete Hegseth and Kash Patel, as well as Senators Ted Cruz and majority leader John Thune, have turned up at fights."}],[{"start":850.2,"text":"For Brendan Steinhauser, a former Tea Party leader, Republicans’ enthusiasm for UFC reflects a broader transformation in the party. He remembers when Republican social life revolved around “churches and country clubs”. Buttoned-up figures such as George W Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney cultivated an image of respectability. UFC might have seemed “uncouth”. In the 1990s, McCain was among the politicians who tried to ban the sport, denouncing it as “human cockfighting”."}],[{"start":879.08,"text":"Democrats have been more reluctant to embrace MMA. Campbell McLaren, one of UFC’s original creators, says he tried during the 2020 campaign to persuade Democrats to reach out to its heavily male audience. Their response, as he remembers it, was: “We like your audience but we don’t like your sport.” “I don’t think the sport is Maga,” McLaren says. “But it has been used very effectively by the president to reach young men.”"}],[{"start":903.8,"text":"UFC and TKO executives alike reject the idea that accepting Trump’s invitation made the sport Maga. Lawrence Epstein, UFC’s chief operating officer, says they would have accepted the same invitation from Joe Biden. Shapiro says he does not see White’s ties to Trump as a business risk for the UFC. If there is a risk, he says, it is being “shoehorned” into the idea that Trump’s fandom of UFC means it is a rightwing sport."}],[{"start":930.28,"text":"But for some of the people who had built their lives around UFC, the White House fight meant something else entirely. Forrest Griffin, a former champion who has spent most of his adult life in the sport, found himself unexpectedly emotional. At one point, he heard music and assumed it was coming through speakers. A friend tapped him: a Marine Corps band was playing it live nearby. US Army aircraft flew overhead."}],[{"start":951.96,"text":"“I had, like, tears, dude,” Griffin told me. “I’m not like an emotional person.” He was overwhelmed by “loving America, loving the country, and then, you know, my favourite sport, and my profession, literally, like, what I’ve chosen to do with my life . . . I expected the sport to be bigger,” Griffin says. “But I did not expect that.”"}],[{"start":972.88,"text":"Still, politics ended up spilling into the cage itself. After winning his fight, heavyweight Josh Hokit shouted “Michelle Obama is a man! Am I right, America?” into his microphone. White later condemned the remark as “gross”."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":987.76,"text":"White suggests his own politics are less ideological than his closeness to Trump might imply. “I’m not that guy. You saw there were a lot of Hollywood people at the event on Saturday in LA, and I treat everybody the same whether you’re left, right, or whatever . . . You don’t see me out there like, far right crazy.”"}],[{"start":1005.2,"text":"He rejects the idea that his relationship with Trump is political, in spite of speaking at the past three Republican National Conventions and his 2024 election victory speech, and appearing at Trump’s rallies and his inauguration."}],[{"start":1018.28,"text":"When people suggested after the election that he might join the administration, White says he thought they were crazy. “I want nothing to do with politics . . . He’s my friend. He is truly my friend. My relationship with President Trump isn’t transactional, at all.”"}],[{"start":1032.8,"text":"Politics was not the only kind of power circulating around the cage. Mark Shapiro does not sit down for our interview in a quiet LA hotel conference room. Lean and wiry in a dark blazer over a black T-shirt, the Hollywood dealmaker who runs TKO alongside Ari Emanuel paces around a long wooden table, talking quickly as I sit in my chair. “UFC is mainstream now,” he says. “No doubt about it.”"}],[{"start":1055.72,"text":"There is a fairly spectacular number attached to that assertion. Last summer, just days after taking control of Paramount, Ellison agreed to pay $7.7bn for seven years of US broadcast rights to UFC — about $1.1bn a year. The price startled the industry. Analysts had expected UFC’s rights to fetch considerably less, roughly $900mn a year. “The debate was, can they get a billion?” says Ian Moore, a Bernstein analyst who covers TKO. Nascar’s US television rights were already worth about that much. Paramount went further."}],[{"start":1092.52,"text":"Dave Meltzer, who has covered combat sports for decades as publisher of the Wrestling Observer, calls the $7.7bn price “an incredibly high number”. “On the basis of math it makes no sense,” he says. “It’s a deal that’s going to bring hundreds of millions in losses to Paramount every year.” Paramount says UFC has been performing at or above its internal expectations."}],[{"start":1114.6,"text":"For months, TKO had been talking to almost everyone. Netflix came in “guns blazing”, Shapiro says, but wanted only UFC’s 12 biggest pay-per-view events. Amazon talked up its ability to sell individual fights. TKO also held discussions with Apple, YouTube, Warner Bros Discovery and incumbent ESPN. Paramount initially wanted only a portion of UFC’s Fight Night events. Then, Shapiro says, it changed course almost overnight. “Really on a dime they turned and said, you know what, we re-evaluated this whole equation. We want it all. Or we want nothing.”"}],[{"start":1150.32,"text":"David Ellison was closely involved, although Shapiro says the chiefs of other bidders were at the table too. TKO already had ties to Ellison through Ari Emanuel’s Hollywood talent agency WME, which represented Ellison’s movie studio Skydance. David’s father Larry, the Oracle co-founder and major Trump donor, had been attending UFC fights for years. White, however, could not say whether David had always been a fan. When I ask him, he laughs. “I think he is now! I don’t know if he was before.” A person close to David Ellison said he had long been a fan of combat sports."}],[{"start":1184.72,"text":"As he pursued his takeover of Paramount, which required approval from the Trump administration, Ellison began appearing at UFC fights alongside Trump. Days after Ellison finally got approval and took control of Paramount, his newly acquired company came to an agreement with UFC. The sequence fuelled speculation that Ellison’s closeness to Trump had helped produce the UFC deal. White flatly rejects that. “Trump had nothing to do with these negotiations,” he says."}],[{"start":1215.76,"text":"At a press event last week, Ellison was asked whether he had politicised Paramount through actions such as staging a UFC fight at the White House. “We were in a transaction review process,” he said. “But, with that said, we are now turning that page.” Ellison acknowledged having “a good relationship with this administration”, but insisted he also maintains relationships with Democrats."}],[{"start":1238.72,"text":"UFC executives are frank about the business value of cultivating powerful people. I ask Epstein, its chief operating officer, whether having CEOs and celebrities sitting beside the octagon actually helps the company. “There’s no doubt,” he says. “And I’m not talking about social media influencers. I’m talking about people that influence others to make certain decisions.”"}],[{"start":1260.52,"text":"Some of them never post about attending a fight, he says. It doesn’t matter. “They’re seen at the event or they are noticed that they went to the event. The answer is absolutely, those people make a difference for our business.”"}],[{"start":1274,"text":"The scale of UFC’s ambitions is on display at its HQ. Its 35,000-sq-ft Performance Institute feels part luxury gym, part laboratory. There are scanners measuring fighters’ fat and muscle, anti-gravity treadmills for the injured and a chamber that simulates the thin air at 19,000ft, helping fighters train for high-altitude locations."}],[{"start":1296.32,"text":"Researchers take fighters’ blood before and after bouts to look for biomarkers of brain-tissue damage. Elsewhere are hot and cold pools, cryotherapy chambers and shelves of perfectly folded white towels. A locked refrigerator holds protein shakes marked “UFC ATHLETES ONLY”; nearby are prepared meals of chicken primavera with fettuccine: 570 calories, 40 grammes of protein. Upstairs, N3on, the streamer I had seen in LA, is filming himself sparring with two UFC fighters."}],[{"start":1327.72,"text":"UFC’s ambitions extend far beyond Las Vegas. Its revenue has more than doubled in the past decade, reaching $1.5bn last year. TKO, which also owns WWE and Professional Bull Riders, now has an enterprise value approaching $40bn. “Our aspiration is to be the biggest sport in the world, bigger than soccer,” Epstein says."}],[{"start":1350.56,"text":"The White House provided an unusually effective showroom. Shapiro says foreign government delegations travelled to Washington for Trump’s fight, some encountering UFC live for the first time. “Those same delegations are lining up with financial incentive packages for us to bring the UFC to their countries.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":1368.36,"text":"The commercial ties around the event ran in several directions. Financial disclosures showed one of Trump’s brokerage accounts had bought up to $50,000 of shares in TKO three months earlier. Crypto.com, which gave $35mn to a Trump fundraising vehicle over the previous 18 months, sponsored the event. World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture backed by two of Trump’s sons, paid $250,000 in fighter bonuses. The Trump family promoted gold coins tied to the event that cost as much as $12,000. The White House said Trump’s investments were independently managed and that neither he nor his family could influence trading decisions. It said there were “no conflicts of interest”."}],[{"start":1410.32,"text":"I ask Shapiro whether TKO had safeguards around potential conflicts of interest when doing business so closely with a sitting president. “I mean, look, I sat a couple seats away from him,” Shapiro says. “I can tell you that he had a guest list, and we had a guest list. He didn’t question our guest list, we didn’t question his guest list.” Trump, Shapiro says, was always going to invite “friends, neighbours, partners”, including “historical partners, and, you know, soon to be new partners”."}],[{"start":1436.96,"text":"Back in Las Vegas, the young men fighting in front of Dana White are competing for something more immediate: a UFC contract. “Dana White’s Contender Series” is part reality show, part recruitment programme. The room has the air of a high-tech high-school gym."}],[{"start":1448.6,"text":"Inside the cage, blood is running down Jaden Ortega’s face. Between rounds, he slumps on to a stool while men in pink medical gloves press cold metal compresses against his cheeks and squeeze water into his mouth. They tell him to spit out blood, and he wordlessly does it. Then the bell rings and he goes back out."}],[{"start":1468.56,"text":"Ortega loses. Afterwards he hangs over the chain-link fence, exhausted, while White stands and applauds. “Great fight, kid,” he tells him."}],[{"start":1476.16,"text":"Half an hour later, White’s phone is lighting up with messages from UFC doctors. He angles his phone to show me as he scrolls. It’s an endless stream of close-up photos of demolished faces of fighters: swollen eyes, open cuts, purple bruises. Some have just left the cage minutes ago. Ortega’s lip is torn apart."}],[{"start":1494.64,"text":"“Why are they sending you those photos?” I ask."}],[{"start":1497.28,"text":"“To let us know what’s going on,” White says. Some fighters need to be sent straight to hospital. “Scar tissue can start to build up in there, and you’ll always cut into it if you don’t sew them up the right way. These guys sew them up from the inside out.”"}],[{"start":1509.76,"text":"“Think of the crazy fucking shit that you see this weekend, from Saturday to today,” he says. In 25 years, UFC has never had a death, White says, knocking his fist against the table as if for luck. “I’m at a point in my life . . . I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to one of these kids,” he says, his eyes tearing up. He scrolls to another photograph, this one showing Joshua Van, Saturday’s big winner, with one eye swollen almost completely shut, a dark-purple bulge beneath his brow."}],[{"start":1537.52,"text":"Earlier, as Ortega and his opponent traded punches a few feet in front of us, White had looked delighted. “There’s nothing better to watch on TV on a Tuesday night than this,” he said."}],[{"start":1546.28,"text":"After the fights, I follow White through the crowd, past security guards and fans shouting “Dana! Dana!” A television camera trails behind us. Backstage, there is a chihuahua on a couch. A bowl of Butterfingers rests on a coffee table. Keto pizzas and cookies are spread across other tables, alongside a birthday cake for one of White’s assistants."}],[{"start":1566.92,"text":"White still has to decide which fighters will get into the UFC. His deliberation with his team takes less than a minute. He has spent the evening taking notes on briefing sheets listing each fighter’s age, height, record and notable opponents. But there is little discussion now. He and his team run quickly through the names. They seem in agreement and White is relaxed. “OK, I’m going out,” he says."}],[{"start":1589.36,"text":"Seconds later, he is back in front of the cameras announcing his decisions. Winning, it turns out, is not a prerequisite. Two of the fighters White signs tonight have lost their fights. “Both of these guys are in the hospital right now . . . as they should be,” White tells the audience. “One of the greatest fights you will ever see — Tuesdays or Saturdays or any other day.”"}],[{"start":1609.6,"text":"“The fight was incredible. But it takes two guys to make a great fight. I’m taking ’em both!” he announces. “Hopefully they’re watching it on their phones.” The crowd cheers."}],[{"start":1619.28,"text":"After four days around UFC, I am beginning to understand White’s choices. This is surprising, because I still know very little about the technicalities of mixed martial arts, but even I can tell which fights electrify the room and which leave it cold."}],[{"start":1633.72,"text":"Epstein has an analogy for why UFC can be easy to grasp. He and Lorenzo Fertitta, UFC’s former co-owner, used to compare sports to modern art. Cricket, they decided, was like Mark Rothko: difficult to penetrate if you didn’t already understand it. UFC was Andy Warhol. The entry point requires little explanation: two people are fighting."}],[{"start":1654.84,"text":"Forrest Griffin had the same revelation much earlier. When he first saw UFC in 1999, he was a basketball and US football fan. But UFC was “the purest form of human competition”, he remembers thinking. Soon the elaborate rules of other sports seemed strangely artificial. “I was like, what, these rules are stupid. Let’s just fight. Let’s make that the sport, just the fight.”"}],[{"start":1678.24,"text":"Luke Thomas, the combat-sports analyst, remembers being drawn to something more uncomfortable. “I was curious about regulated violence,” he says of discovering MMA as a teenager. “I was curious about how it made me feel.” Thomas compares a fight to riding a rollercoaster. Unrestrained, either could kill you. “You get to experience this thrilling way of moving through the world,” he says."}],[{"start":1700.36,"text":"Three decades after UFC emerged during what Werme calls the “car crash” culture of the 1990s, the era of Dr Dre and Nirvana, what once shocked has become ordinary. UFC did not simply become more acceptable. America also moved towards the UFC. In the world of Trump and Rogan, N3ons and Nelks, polish can look suspicious; being offensive can look authentic. What once kept UFC outside the establishment now helped pull it inside."}],[{"start":1727.64,"text":"White finishes announcing his contracts and walks off camera. Marcos Degli, a Brazilian flyweight he has just signed, is waiting for him. Earlier, I had watched Degli squeeze one tattooed arm around his opponent’s neck until his face contorted, as the crowd cheered. Now he is wearing a red Dana White’s Contender Series hoodie, flashing a bright, toothy smile."}],[{"start":1749.04,"text":"White stops to shake his hand. “Congrats,” he says. “Nasty one-arm choke!”"}],[{"start":1749.54,"text":"Degli beams. “I am superstar,” he says. “New superstar!”"}],[{"start":1758.44,"text":"Anna Nicolaou is the FT US media editor"}],[{"start":1761,"text":"Additional reporting by Samuel Agini"}],[{"start":1763.32,"text":"Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend Magazine on X and FT Weekend on Instagram"}],[{"start":1769.64,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1792377679_2875.mp3"}