Not only will the much talked about UFC: White House event be celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States, but it will also be taking place on the day of President Trump’s 80th birthday.
The latest update on the timing of the one-of-a-kind event came from President Trump himself during at a naval base in Virginia.
“On June 14 next year, we’re going to have a big UFC fight at the White House – right at the White House, on the grounds of the White House,” Trump told a a gathering of navyl sailors.
While he didn’t mention it himself at the time, June 14th also happens to be Trump’s 80th birthday, and that’s likely no coincidence given that the current president has long been a fan of mixed martial arts.
However, while the date may now be confirmed, there’s still plenty of speculation surrounding who will actually fight on the card.
Conor McGregor recently claimed that he’d been negotiating directly with the White House and that his fight was ‘signed, sealed and delivered’, but after UFC 320 on Saturday night Dana White said that wasn’t the case.
“We’re still talking about the production and how everything is going to work at the White House,” White told reporters. “We have not started negotiating any fights for the White House yet. That won’t even start till February.”
“I made it clear, Conor wants to fight on that card, and you can clearly see Conor is fired up to fight on that card, but nothing is done yet.”
Meanwhile, Alex Pereira is the latest fighter to declare his desire to fight at the historic event, stating his interest in moving up to heavyweight for a superfight against Jon Jones.
In a classy show of respect, Pereira didn’t call out Jones during his Octagon interview after KO’ing Magomed Ankalaev to win back the 205lb title at UFC 320 on Saturday night, instead asking the crowd for a moment of silence to pay respects to Jones brother Arthur Jones, who passed away in his sleep just a few days ago.
However, at the post-fight press conference, Pereira acknowledged that he did want to challenge himself against Jones at the White House event.
“Thanks for congratulating me, but all I want is a superfight,” Pereira said. “I want to fight at heavyweight.”
“With all due respect, with all the respect I have for the situation … I was going to ask for Jon Jones at the White House, but with everything that happened, it’s not the right time to talk about it.”
Of course the immediate stumbling block there is that Dana White has previously gone on record as saying that Jones has a “billion-to-one” chance of fighting on the card due to his current lack of trust in the star after he retired instead of defending the belt against Tom Aspinall earlier this year.
Added to that, White is known to be hesitant to see Pereira step up another weight class, but he’s not ruling out the possibility of it happening.
“It’s not that I have any reservations about it. The guy is in a division where there’s still interesting fights,” White said at the UFC 320 post-fight presser. “I like the guy so much. We’ll see. We’ll have to talk about it. I just don’t see why, unless he wants to retire. Why throw him at heavyweight? (It doesn’t) make any sense other than he just wants to do it so bad I’ll just say yes.”
