How the Bullies Stole the UFC

There was a time when the UFC was strenuously apolitical. There were fighters who seemed like assholes and others who didn’t, of course, but that was part of the fun. When Matt Serra famously disparaged his welterweight rival Matt Hughes as “a jock asshole” in season 6 of The Ultimate Fighter, it could be hard for an outsider to know what to make of it. One professional athlete calling another a jock? Aren’t they all jocks? It only made sense within the peculiar logic of MMA broadly and the UFC at the time, which was somehow both a sport and not a sport, “as real as it gets,” but also transparently entertainment. To its fans, it was somehow both the only pure sport and the anti-sport sport. MMA writer Ben Fowlkes once described it as “sports without the metaphor.”

Serra was in some ways speaking to the essential dichotomy of martial arts: Is it a way for outsiders to find their strength or for bullies to enforce a hierarchy? That’s the central conflict in basically every combat sports movie or TV show, from Karate Kid and Rocky to, perhaps most obviously, Bully Beatdown, which ran from 2009-2012 on MTV and starred two UFC luminaries, fighter Mayhem Miller and referee Big John McCarthy. And that was about as political as it got in those days: Serra, a lovable loudmouth from Long Island painting the quietly arrogant wrestling champ from rural Illinois as “a jock.” Which landed because Hughes could be seen tossing hay bales and talking about eating a “country breakfast” in his Xyience commercials (Hughes would be known forever after as “Country Breakfast” on the MMA forums in which the biggest fans all gathered). There were arguably some political overtones, but you had to squint. No one ever invoked left vs. right, liberal vs. conservative, crypto or woke, or God forbid, any specific politicians.

These days, not only does everything about the UFC seem overtly political, it’s hard not to look around and wonder whether the bullies have won. Conor McGregor showed up at the White House earlier this month, looking, as sportswriter Spencer Hall described, “like Jason Kidd got stung by a hundred bees.” (As even the most casual martial artist knows, martial arts isn’t great for your face).

While the more engaged MMA fans probably just wish McGregor would go away at this point, he’s still referred to in most write-ups as “former UFC champion Conor McGregor.” This despite an uncertain status at present and many wondering whether he’ll ever fight again. Few wondered, however, what McGregor was doing at the White House. He was promoting far right politics, of course. The last few years have seen McGregor accused of stoking anti-migrant sentiment into a riot in 2023, be ruled liable for a 2018 rape in court less than six months ago, and get dropped by the Proper 12 whiskey brand he helped to create. And now here he was on St. Patrick’s Day, fielding questions from the White House press pool, saying things like ““Ireland is at the cusp of potentially losing its Irishness,” and “The illegal immigration racket is running ravage on the country. There are rural towns in Ireland that have been overrun in one swoop, that have become a minority in one swoop.”

Days later he announced that he would actually be running for president of Ireland, confirming rumors that had been swirling for months.