For Trump, it’s always about the fight … except when it’s a real war

June 21, 2026 — 5:00am

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Last Sunday, US President Donald Trump celebrated his 80th birthday with an astonishing cage fighting spectacle on the southern lawn of the White House.

Thousands of fans cheered on underneath “The Claw” – the purpose-built arena housing the Octagon, where the fighters met. Millions more watched at home.

A few days later, podcaster Joe Rogan, a long-time UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) commentator, described the state of the fighter who lost the main bout – Ilia Topuria.

“He couldn’t see out of either eye,” Rogan recounted on his podcast. “He’d gotten kneed to the body real bad when he was on the ground. Justin [Gaethje, his opponent] had him down with his two hands and just smashed a knee into his ribcage and then … he had to retire on his stool.”

Excitedly, Rogan went on.

“Both of his eyes were swollen shut. His nose was f---ed up. He’d taken so many punches to the face it looked like ... he had a fractured orbital … he was unrecognisable.”

It was, Rogan said, “one of the most epic things I’ve ever seen in my life”.

As a sport, UFC is as polarising as the man who commissioned this enormous, orgiastic display, which was dubbed UFC Freedom 250, as it doubled as a birthday celebration for the United States itself, which turns 250 on July 4. To its detractors, UFC is a horrifying, barbaric celebration of violence that has no place in a civilised society.

But for fans of the sport, it is a death-defying, awe-inspiring, physical parable of Darwinian struggle.

Many of the fighters have hard-scrabble back-stories. Professional fist-fighting was their way out of poverty. It might have kept them out of jail.

Once a pariah sport that cable networks refused to........

© The Sydney Morning Herald