Dana White: UFC Freedom 250 one and done, but new (old) concept being considered
WASHINGTON – UFC Freedom 250 was a unique event and a smashing success, according to Dana White. However, it’s not to be repeated.
Following UFC Freedom 250 on Sunday, White said the White House event was registering all favorable metrics of success. From breaking merch records to hosting a massive watch party at the Ellipse to receiving an excitable phone call from Paramount CEO David Ellison, White is pleased and beamed ear-to-ear telling the world as much.
“In every way that you can gauge success,” White told MMA Junkie and other reporters at a post-fight news conference. “I mean, we beat the all-time merch number by double. We beat the budget by 40 percent. I just got off the phone with David Ellison. He’s going crazy. Out the gates from the first fight, the fight exceeded all their expectations. I’ll let Paramount make their own announcement, but it was monstrous tonight. It was monstrous. You don’t get calls from billionaires flipping out too often. He is extremely excited. I’ll let them do their thing. Over the last two days, there was something like almost 200,000 people over at the Ellipse. The list goes on and on.”
Not even weather (the most highly anticipated in MMA history) stood in the way.
“It was beautiful all day, and then it was looking like from 6 to 9 there’s going to be a storm. This is f*cking crazy, but the storm literally went like this, and split and went around the White House. Then breeze was perfect. Everything. You couldn’t have had a better night. It was absolutely perfect. There was just enough wind to keep the bugs off us. All the sh*t that I was worried about played out perfectly. Production was off the charts. We built an arena on the White House lawn. That was amazing. But if you look at what we did at the Ellipse, it’s almost as impressive as the White House lawn.”
The event Sunday was advertised as a celebration of the United States’ 250th anniversary, though it took place on president Donald Trump’s 80th birthday. Trump has teased the large UFC structure on the White House South Lawn may stay – but White said he won’t be hosting any more fights there.
“I can’t afford it,” White laughed. “There’s no f*cking way we can do this again. I’ll never do the Sphere again, and we’ll never do this again.
White called the event “one-of-one” and puts it in the same mental bucket as the Sphere event, which took place in September 2024. It’s not to say the UFC won’t find more wildly unique venues and settings to host fights in – even ones involving the current administration.
White said he’s talking with President Trump about potentially bringing back “Fight for the Troops” – a concept the promotion executed three times from 2008 to 2013.
“The president and I are talking about doing a fight for the troops next year,” White said. “Obviously if you do a fight for the troops, we’d do all that kind of stuff. We did a lot of them in the past. We used to work with the Fisher family, who are very dialed in with the military and could get things done easily. It’s not easy to get things done on military bases and things like that. But when we have the Fisher family, and obviously the president can make a lot of things happen, we’re talking about doing it next year. He wanted to do it this year and I said, ‘Sir, I need a year to recover financially from the White House fights. So give me a year.”
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: UFC White House card huge success – but never to be repeated
