New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has revealed that the strangest item he encountered in the Oval Office during his meeting with President Donald Trump last week was a dossier titled “UFC at the White House”.
Appearing on The Adam Friedland Show Wednesday, Mamdani said he had entered the room and encountered “all these different coffee table books” spread out across the furniture.
“One of them is ‘UFC at the White House,’” he continued, adding that he previously had “no idea” about the mixed martial arts event the president is intending to stage on the South Lawn in June next year to celebrate the 250th anniversary of America.
“I was just flipping through that,” Mamdani said, explaining when pressed for more details that it was essentially just a file of concept art for what the octagon-shaped cage arena might look like once it is erected at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue next summer.
Asked by Friedland whether he intended to attend the fight, the mayor-elect chuckled and answered, “No!”
Trump first trailed the sporting event in July during a speech at the Iowa State Fairgrounds, and it is expected to be held on June 14, 2026, which also just so happens to be the president’s own 80th birthday, and include a weigh-in for the combatants in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
He initially said 25,000 could watch the bout live, but UFC President and CEO Dana Whiteput the capacity at just 5,000 when asked by Fox News in September.
White did pledge that large screens would be erected in a nearby park to relay the contest to an 85,000-strong crowd.
He also told Sports Business Journal in October that his company would pay $700,000 to restore the South Lawn after the event.
There is no word yet as to who the fighters taking part will be.
Trump has a long association with combat sports and is a long-time friend of White’s, who spoke at his Mar-a-Lago victory party after he won last year’s presidential election.
During that campaign, an interview with former fighter and podcaster Joe Rogan was credited with helping Trump reach a wider audience.
The president has attended UFC bouts in the last year in the company of Elon Musk and cabinet secretaries, including Robert F Kennedy Jr, while Irish former UFC champion Conor McGregor was hosted at the White House for St Patrick’s Day.
Mamdani’s meeting with Trump on Friday proved unexpectedly cordial, despite the president calling the democratic socialist a “100% Communist Lunatic” during his campaign and threatening to withdraw federal funding from New York City if he won – an outcome that shocked his MAGA allies.
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