{"id":2110,"date":"2026-06-15T12:07:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T12:07:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=2110"},"modified":"2026-06-15T12:07:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T12:07:17","slug":"wild-ufc-freedom-250-card-on-white-house-south-lawn-draws-rave-reviews-put-on-a-great-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=2110","title":{"rendered":"Wild ‘UFC Freedom 250’ card on White House South Lawn draws rave reviews: ‘Put on a great show’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 UFC Freedom 250 on the White House South Lawn was a knockout, in more ways than one.<\/p>\n

Read more Britain will ban under-16s from using social media apps including TikTok and YouTube: Starmer<\/a><\/p>\n

All seven of the fights on Sunday night\u2019s card ended via TKO \u2014 no judges, no controversy, no kidding.<\/p>\n

The climax came just after 1 a.m. Monday, when American Justin Gaethje, to the delight of the newly minted octogenarian President Trump, stopped Georgian-Spanish champion and heavy favorite Ilia Topuria to claim the lightweight title belt.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m from America. Two hundred and fifty years ago, we were way bigger than six-to-one [underdogs],\u201d Gaethje told interviewer Joe Rogan after forcing Topuria to quit on his stool with a face that looked like a slab of raw meat in a butcher\u2019s window.<\/p>\n

It was a stirring end to an evening where thousands of fight fans, left-wing protesters and\u00a0Trump supporters\u00a0descended on the nation\u2019s capital to\u00a0celebrate the commander-in-chief\u2019s 80th birthday\u00a0by watching some of the most exciting mixed martial artists going.<\/p>\n

The card more than delivered on its promise, with each of the first six fights not even reaching the end of the second five-minute round as many of the service members who made up the lucky 4,000 ticketed guests who filled the temporary arena chanted, \u201cU-S-A! U-S-A!\u201d<\/p>\n

An estimated 80,000 more watched the contests on the Ellipse just to the south of the executive mansion, while thousands more sought an elevated space on the National Mall and craned for a view of the giant screens showing the action.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it was super entertaining,\u201d 38-year-old Marcus Delaney of Columbus, Ohio, said as he left the watch party. \u201cSome people were complaining about wanting technical fights, but in the end, these guys really put on a great show. Every time someone got dropped, the crowd went wild. It was never boring. Overall a really, really great show.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe some of the hardcore fans were a little annoyed, but I wasn\u2019t,\u201d agreed Aaron Mercado, 45, of Fairfax, Va. \u201cThis was so much about spectacle. I wouldn\u2019t have minded seeing these guys get tested a little more, but this wasn\u2019t really about that. On an ordinary card, [seven] knockouts might leave you guessing how evenly matched everybody was. This just wasn\u2019t that kind of card.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, it\u2019s great. It\u2019s been great,\u201d Javetchar Riez of Frederick, Md., told The Post as he headed for home. \u201cI would have definitely loved to see, like, like Conor [McGregor]. If Conor would have been here, oh my God, it would have topped it all. But I think the selection [of fighters] was good. It was really good.\u201d<\/p>\n

No one would forget where they were on this night, and the organizers made sure of it.<\/p>\n

After a brief delay to allow a threatened thunderstorm to pass \u2014 though nothing more than a drizzle fell on the district \u2014 Trump and UFC boss Dana White emerged onto the South Portico and walked to their seats before the Zac Brown Band played \u201cThe Star-Spangled Banner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fighters entered the octagon from various parts of the White House while their walkout music was performed by the United States Marine Band, with Gaethje and Topuria beginning the long walk from the Oval Office itself.<\/p>\n

Several Cabinet heads \u2014 including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, War Secretary Pete Hegseth and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. \u2014 were among the VIPs, as were House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), himself a former college wrestling champion.<\/p>\n

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison and other business leaders were also in attendance.<\/p>\n

Read more Real leadership can save Penn Station from its homeless plague, Mr. President<\/a><\/p>\n

Hours before the scheduled 8 p.m. start time, MMA fans\u00a0rushed toward checkpoints to enter the watch party \u2014 while protesters manned port-a-potties and invited passersby to wish the president a \u201ccrappy birthday.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe left at like 2:00 in the morning. None of us could sleep, we were so buzzed about this,\u201d said Kellen Drury, 27, of Altoona, Pa., who arrived in DC with three friends despite not being able to score tickets to either the watch party or main event.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was still worth the trip just to be here. It\u2019s like being outside the Super Bowl,\u201d Drury told The Post.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are gonna bitch and moan about the cost, they\u2019re gonna call it tacky, they\u2019re gonna speak out against the brutality of the fighting itself. But even the haters are gonna watch it because that\u2019s what Donald Trump\u2019s all about, making it too hard to look away.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI tried to get my wife to come with me, but she had no interest in spending the weekend with UFC fans, and no interest in being around political hotheads on the right or the left,\u201d said UFC fan Darius Boone, 43, of Prince George\u2019s County, Md.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just here because I\u2019m a fan and nothing like this has ever been done before,\u201d Boone added. \u201cPlus, it\u2019s celebratory. I mean, come on, we\u2019re celebrating a major milestone in the history of our country.<\/p>\n

\u201cReally, what\u2019s more American than a $60 million claw on the White House lawn?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow many times do you get a chance to see something that\u2019s never been done before, especially something so ridiculous?\u201d agreed Nolan Haugen, 34, of Fargo, ND. \u201cIt\u2019s like bringing Las Vegas to DC!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course I had to see it \u2014 just to say I was here,\u201d he added. \u201cI\u2019m not even that big a fan of the UFC, although I\u2019ll admit I\u2019m a fan of the president. Happy birthday President Trump!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

DC local Nadia Rahman, 36, slammed the event as \u201ccompletely tasteless.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is historic, in its own way, because nothing else Trump has done in either term quite encapsulates who he is in one swoop. It\u2019s strangely comical, except nothing about what I\u2019m seeing is the least bit funny. It\u2019s just like Trump\u2019s ballroom,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

Outside the gates of the Ellipse, members of the far-left group Code Pink held a potluck-style picnic, offering food to passersby under a banner bearing the slogan: \u201cThey fight, we feed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe reject this endless, endless violent culture that the US has perpetuated,\u201d said a volunteer who declined to give their name. \u201cFrom our endless wars, our Pentagon budget, our rights being stripped away, our neighbors being kidnapped. So we are instead living the world that we want by feeding each other and taking care of each other, versus celebrating fighting and violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

The National Park Service said in a court filing Tuesday that the UFC and its sponsors had spent \u201cwell over\u00a0$60\u00a0million\u00a0and tens of thousands of hours of labor\u201d on the event. The NPS was responding to a lawsuit from the liberal Public Integrity Project, which alleged the fights amounted to a \u201ccorrupt use of our most sacred national monuments for private gain.\u201d<\/p>\n

DC federal judge Amit Mehta dismissed the suit Friday, finding that neither of Public Integrity Project\u2019s clients were able to show they were \u201cdirectly affected\u201d by the fights.<\/p>\n

Read more Israel refuses to leave Lebanon, vows to hit Iran \u2018with all our might\u2019 if Tehran attacks<\/a><\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Ally Goelz<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All seven of Sunday night’s fights were decided via technical knockout.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2109,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nWild 'UFC Freedom 250' card on White House South Lawn draws rave reviews: 'Put on a great show' - Metro Transit Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=2110\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Wild 'UFC Freedom 250' card on White House South Lawn draws rave reviews: 'Put on a great show' - Metro Transit Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"All seven of Sunday night's fights were decided via technical knockout.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=2110\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Metro Transit Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-15T12:07:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/metrotransitreview.com\\\/?p=2110#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/metrotransitreview.com\\\/?p=2110\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/metrotransitreview.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/7cd7bd9683106710eed62ba5da559b14\"},\"headline\":\"Wild ‘UFC Freedom 250’ card on White House South Lawn draws rave reviews: ‘Put on a great show’\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-15T12:07:17+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/metrotransitreview.com\\\/?p=2110\"},\"wordCount\":1245,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/metrotransitreview.com\\\/?p=2110#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/metrotransitreview.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/83b59ee7ffd779cc49a2dfe40f11fcb3.webp\",\"articleSection\":[\"Politics\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/metrotransitreview.com\\\/?p=2110#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/metrotransitreview.com\\\/?p=2110\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/metrotransitreview.com\\\/?p=2110\",\"name\":\"Wild 'UFC Freedom 250' card on White House South Lawn draws rave reviews: 'Put on a great show' - 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