Bookmakers Release Odds for UFC's White House Fight Night
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content.
BetOnline.ag has released betting odds for what could be the most unprecedented event in mixed martial arts (MMA0 history.
Following President Donald Trump's announcement that he is considering hosting an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event at the White House to mark America's 250th anniversary, the sportsbook created an extensive menu of creative proposition bets for the potentially historic July 4, 2026, occasion.
Newsweek has previously contacted the White House and UFC via email for comment.
Why It Matters
This potential UFC event represents an unprecedented fusion of politics and sports entertainment, forming part of Trump's broader America 250 celebration plans.
The president's enthusiasm for MMA, combined with his friendship with UFC President Dana White, has transformed what might seem like an outlandish idea into a legitimate possibility that's captured betting markets and public attention.
The event would mark the first time a professional combat sports event has been held on White House grounds, potentially accommodating 20,000 to 25,000 spectators to watch the "full fight" according to Trump's estimates.
President Donald Trump and UFC CEO Dana White attend a UFC 316 event at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, on June 7.
President Donald Trump and UFC CEO Dana White attend a UFC 316 event at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, on June 7.
FRANK FRANKLIN II/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
What To Know
Speaking at the Iowa State Fairgrounds on Thursday, Trump outlined his vision for the event: "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."
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed after the speech that Trump was "dead serious" about hosting the event.
A UFC official told CNN that the organization is "in discussions with the White House about hosting a UFC event on site."
Which Fighters Could Be in the UFC White House Main Event?
Dustin Poirier leads the main event betting at 5/2 odds, followed by Max Holloway at 3/1 and Sean O'Malley at 4/1. Justin Gaethje sits at 9/2, while Sean Brady rounds out the top five at 11/2.
Notable fighters further down the list include former champions Jon Jones at 8/1 and Conor McGregor at 10/1.
Who Could Be a White House UFC Ring Girl?
The political ring girl category features GOP Alabama Senator Katie Britt as the favorite at 8/1, with Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem at 9/1 and GOP Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert at 10/1. Leavitt sits at 12/1, while members of the Trump family including Tiffany Trump (16/1) and Ivanka Trump (25/1) are also featured.
Some prominent Democrats are also listed. Former first lady Michelle Obama and former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg sit last on the list at 500/1.
Where Could the White House Octagon Be Located?
Location betting heavily favors the South Lawn at 1/2 odds, while the Tennis Court and Putting Green area sits at 5/2.
The Rose Garden carries 4/1 odds, with indoor locations like the West Wing (8/1) and East Wing (12/1) considered less likely venues.
Presidential Involvement
Betting markets show strong confidence Trump will personally present the championship belt, with "Yes" odds at 2/3 compared to "No" at 1/1.
For Trump's first octagon appearance, dancing carries 1/2 odds while speaking on the microphone first sits at 3/2.
What People Are Saying
President Donald Trump on Thursday: "So every one of our national parks, battlefields and historic sites are going to have special events in honor of America 250. And I even think we're going to have a UFC fight."
Monica Crowley, the chief of protocol of the U.S., said: "We've had so much division and so much polarization over the last many decades, but certainly over the last few years, that to be able to bring the country together to celebrate America's 250th birthday through patriotism, shared values and a renewed sense of civic pride, to be able to do that in the center of the country, is incredibly important."
What Happens Next?
While officials have not confirmed a specific date or provided logistical details, the betting markets suggest confidence that the event will proceed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Bloomberg
24 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Trump Weighing Federal Takeover of Washington, DC
President Donald Trump said his administration is weighing whether to take control of the city of Washington, DC, to help combat crime, in a move that would represent a dramatic upheaval to the capital's half-century of home rule. 'We could run DC. I mean, we're looking at DC,' Trump said during a cabinet meeting Tuesday, where he was holding court at length in front of cameras. 'We're thinking about doing it, to be honest with you. We want a capital that's run flawlessly.' (Source: Bloomberg)
The Hill
26 minutes ago
- The Hill
Democrats see political gift in Trump's ‘big, beautiful bill'
Democrats say Republicans have given them a political gift with President Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill.' They say they can easily sell the bill to the public as a threat to working class voters, given its cuts to Medicaid and food stamps and significant tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy. 'This is a rare policy gift to Democrats in that it was perpetrated by Republicans, harms almost everybody, and it's actually relatively easy to talk about,' said Democratic strategist Christy Setzer. With that in mind, Democratic campaign operatives — with a big assist from liberal advocacy groups — have kicked off a messaging blitz that's likely to continue until Election Day. On Monday, the House Democrats' campaign arm launched its first national digital ad campaign of the year targeting 35 battleground Republicans who voted for Trump's bill despite reservations over Medicaid cuts. The House Democrats' top super PAC is finalizing another slate of ads — a six-figure mix of television and digital — that will launch in the coming weeks. And Unrig the Economy, an outside advocacy group, wasted no time complementing the effort. They've launched a seven-figure ad blitz targeting 12 vulnerable Republicans, with plans to spend an additional $10 million in the coming months. The ads highlight three of the most contentious provisions of the GOP bill: the cuts to health and nutrition programs, combined with a rollback of green-energy subsidies that's expected to spike utility costs across large parts of the country. 'Those are the three arguments that we see as the ones that hurt people the most, and the place that Republicans are most vulnerable to accountability,' a spokesperson for the group said Tuesday. The strategy is reminiscent of the Republican attacks on the Affordable Care Act, another wildly contentious bill that was broadly unpopular when Democrats passed it under President Obama in 2010. Months later, Republicans would pick up 63 House seats and flip control of the chamber — the same goal Democrats have set for next year's midterms. And the campaign extends far beyond Capitol Hill. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D), who says he is weighing a 2028 presidential bid, has already begun using the controversial legislation as a talking point as he looks toward next year's elections. 'Next year, I'll also be the head of the Democratic Governors Association, and especially in these rural states, where Republican governors have not spoken up whatsoever to stop this devastating bill, we're going to have strong candidates, we're going to win a lot of elections,' Beshear said in a CNN interview on Sunday. Republicans are also vowing to go on the offensive, highlighting the tax cuts as a windfall for workers and the immigration crackdown as a boon for public safety. If anyone should be on the defensive, they say, it's Democrats for opposing the legislation. 'National Democrats' desperate and disgusting fear-mongering tactics are nothing more than a lame attempt to distract voters from the fact that they just voted to raise taxes, kill jobs, gut national security, and allow wide open borders,' Mike Marinella, a spokesman for the House Republicans' campaign arm, said Tuesday. 'We will use every tool to show voters that the provisions in this bill are widely popular and that Republicans stood with them while House Democrats sold them out.' But some Republicans have already handed Democrats easy soundbites to put in their ads in the lead-up to 2026 midterms. 'What do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding isn't there anymore?' Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), one of the three GOP senators to oppose the bill, said last week on the chamber floor. The criticisms were not overlooked by Democrats, who see Tillis as an asset to their messaging efforts. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) cited Tillis in arguing against the bill last week, and Tillis himself warned his colleagues about an Obamacare-style backlash to the bill. 'When you have even Republicans saying it on the record, it kind of rebuts any argument that the NRCC's gonna try to make,' said a Democratic operative. 'I think you will definitely see Thom Tillis in campaign ads — or his words, at minimum.' On the heels of the bill's passage, Democrats are already pointing to polling foreshadowing favorable outcomes in 2026. A Quinnipiac University poll out in late June revealed that 55 percent of voters oppose the 'Big Beautiful Bill,' and a Fox News poll out last month showed 59 percent of voters oppose it. But some Democrats worry that merely defining Republicans with the bill may not be enough, saying that the party needs to coalesce around an agenda of their own for voters to turn to. 'Democrats have done a good job defining the bill as being bad for regular people. The Democrats have to do better at making an argument that they have an agenda that will challenge the status quo on behalf of working people to make their lives better,' said Democratic strategist Jamal Simmons. 'It's something Democrats need to start doing now because it's a long term problem that needs a long term solution.' A further challenge facing Democrats involves the timing of some of the law's provisions. While benefits like the tax cuts take effect long before the midterms, the cuts to Medicaid and food stamps are delayed until January of 2027 — after voters go to the polls. 'It will be harder to show someone who has lost his or her health care. Instead, they'll have to talk about who's at risk,' said Simmons. 'From a messaging perspective, it's more compelling to show someone who has…already lost their benefits than to discuss someone in jeopardy of losing their benefits.' Regardless, Democrats agree that the bill's impacts must be told at the local level with the stories of voters who are at risk or already affected. They're already pointing, for instance, at a rural hospital in Nebraska that's closing its doors as a direct result of the coming Medicaid cuts. 'You might see rural hospitals closing a little bit sooner. It's got to be about rural hospitals that were open and this month they're closed because of what Donald Trump and Republicans did,' said Democratic strategist Joel Payne. 'It's got to be an effect. It's got to be stories. It's got to be individuals and real people.' '…This can't be a Washington, inside-the-Beltway story. This has to be a story that's told all around the country,' Payne added. In recent years, political observers say Democrats have struggled to reach broader audiences, the latest example being their inability to connect with middle-income voters in the 2024 presidential election. But they say the time is ripe for Democrats to push beyond their 'very same tried and true tactics,' as Setzer put it. 'We have a messengers problem. We have a message problem. We don't actually have a substance problem right now,' Setzer said. 'We have a very important piece of legislation to run against right now that is very wide-ranging in its impact. So they need to expand who they are talking to…and expand the platforms on which we are talking to people.' 'In every electoral victory that we've seen lately, whether it is Donald Trump or Mamdani, you see someone who is willing to branch out in the platforms that they're going to,' Setzer added.
Yahoo
26 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Fact check: Debunking 11 of Trump's false claims at Cabinet meeting
President Donald Trump again turned a Cabinet meeting into a wide-ranging conversation with reporters – and again uttered a whole bunch of false claims in the process. Trump's Tuesday remarks at the White House included inaccurate assertions about inflation, immigration, his tariff policy, the massive domestic policy bill he signed last week, China's use of wind energy, US and European aid to Ukraine, the US relationship with South Korea, and other subjects. Here is a fact check of 11 of the president's false claims. This is not a comprehensive list. Inflation: As he has repeatedly, Trump falsely claimed Tuesday, 'We have no inflation.' The US does have inflation – an annual inflation rate of 2.4% in May, an uptick from a 2.3% annual rate in April. That April rate was the lowest since early 2021, and lower than some economists expected for April after Trump imposed significant new tariffs, but it's not 'no inflation' whatsoever. (And on a month-to-month basis, US consumer prices increased 0.1% in May and 0.2% in April.) Tax on Social Security: Touting the new domestic policy legislation, Trump repeated his false claim that it achieves his campaign promise of 'no tax on Social Security.' It does not. The legislation does create an additional, temporary $6,000-per-year tax deduction for individuals age 65 and older (with a smaller deduction for individuals earning $75,000 per year or more), but the White House itself has implicitly acknowledged that millions of Social Security recipients age 65 and older will continue to pay taxes on their benefits – and that new deduction, which expires in 2028, doesn't even apply to the Social Security recipients who are younger than 65. Trump's tariff letters: Trump spoke of the letters he sent to various foreign leaders announcing the tariff rates he plans to impose on their countries beginning in August – and said, 'I just want you to know - a letter means a deal.' That's just not true. Multiple letters the White House revealed on Monday announced tariff rates Trump said he plans to unilaterally place on imports from foreign countries; those letters did not describe negotiated deals. Who pays tariffs: Trump repeatedly spoke of how his new tariffs mean other countries will have to 'pay' the US for the privilege of doing business in the US. Contrary to Trump's frequent assertions, it is the US importers who buy foreign products, not foreign countries themselves, who make the tariff payments to the US government. Tariff history: Trump repeated his regular false claim that the US was 'proportionately' at its 'wealthiest' between 1870 and 1913, when tariff revenue made up a much larger share of federal revenue before the reintroduction of the income tax. Trump didn't explain what he meant by 'proportionately' or 'the wealthiest,' but economists say that by any standard measure, the US is far wealthier today than it was in the early 20th century and prior; per capita gross domestic product is now many times higher than it was then. China and wind power: Trump, asserting that 'smart countries' don't use wind and solar energy, repeated his recent false claim that China, the world's biggest manufacturer of wind turbines, barely uses such equipment itself - wrongly saying, 'They don't have a lot of wind farms, I'll tell you; very, very few.' In reality, China is the world leader in the generation of wind power and has massive wind farms onshore and offshore; it continues to install additional wind capacity much faster than the US. California and energy: Trump, reviving a previous inaccurate complaint about California's use of renewable energy sources, falsely claimed: 'They have blackouts and brownouts every week.' The state simply does not; its power system has improved significantly since the rolling blackouts of a 2020 heat wave. Daniel Villasenor, a spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom, said in a Tuesday email that Trump is again 'lying about California.' Villasenor wrote: 'The state has not experienced any rotating outages since 2020 – and in the last three years, no Flex Alert calling to conserve power has even been issued. Not only has our grid been increasingly resilient, it's also cleaner than ever – clean energy provided for 100% of demand on our grid for at least some part of the day 167 out of the first 180 days of the year.' US and European aid to Ukraine: Trump repeated his frequent false claim that the US has provided 'far more' wartime aid to Ukraine that Europe has, saying the US is 'in there for over $300 billion; Europe's in there for over $100 billion.' Those numbers are not close to accurate. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank that closely tracks international aid to Ukraine, the US had committed about $139 billion in military, financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine from late January 2022, just prior to Russia's full-scale invasion, through April 2025 – well short of about $298 billion committed by European countries and the European Union. The gap was much narrower in terms of aid actually allocated through April 2025 – about $183 billion for Europe to about $134 billion for the US – but even those figures clearly disprove Trump's claim. South Korea's military cost-sharing: Trump repeated his false claim that South Korea convinced former President Joe Biden to let it stop making payments to help cover the cost of the US military presence in South Korea, saying Biden 'cut it down to nothing.' In fact, Biden's administration signed two cost-sharing agreements with South Korea, one in 2021 and one in 2024, that included South Korean spending increases – meaning South Korea agreed to pay more than it did during Trump's first term. US troops in South Korea: Trump again exaggerated the US troop presence in South Korea, falsely saying, 'You know, we have 45,000 soldiers in South Korea.' Official Defense Department data, published online, says the US had 26,206 military personnel in South Korea as of March 31, 2025, with 22,844 on active duty. Migration and mental health: Trump falsely claimed that unnamed foreign countries 'released their insane asylum – the insane asylum population into our country.' Even Trump's own presidential campaign could not produce any evidence for his frequent claims, which he has repeated for more than two years, that foreign countries deliberately emptied their mental health facilities to somehow get patients to migrate to the United States.
