‘Tone-deaf’ to ‘very cool’: What young men thought of Trump’s UFC fight

WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump’s June 14 cage match on the South Lawn appeared to offer everything a young American man could want. There were fighter-jet flyovers and pyrotechnics, Octagon girls and sadistic centre-ring quips aimed at liberals. And for the main event, a seven-card MMA draw delivered on weeks of hype with seven consecutive knockouts (a first for an Ultimate Fighting Championship event).

But would this masculine spectacle help young men forgive and forget their growing disappointment with Trump?

In recent months, the President has seen his support erode with this group, which helped lift him to victory in 2024. A number of recent polls have pointed to drop-offs in Trump’s approval ratings with them, including a New York Times/Siena College survey from May that showed a decline of about 10 percentage points.

The day after the fight, some of the President’s surrogates took to the internet and the air waves to claim a win.

It was “a brain reset, especially for young men,” Andrew Kolvet, the spokesman for Turning Point USA, said on June 15 during an episode of The Charlie Kirk Show. He added that he “saw more patriotism” on social media the night of the fight than he had seen in months.

Displays of potent patriotism and unchained masculinity were indeed on full display on June 14, when some 200,000 attendees gathered for the event on the White House lawn. “USA” chants roared from throngs of 20-somethings in American flag T-shirts. And some fistfights broke out in the crowd.

“Modern day Colosseum energy,” Benny Johnson, a MAGA influencer who was in attendance, wrote in a post on the social media platform X, adding, “It’s unifying and entertaining and fun.”

But outside of online safe spaces where MAGA influencers ecstatically amplify the White House’s messages, the UFC Freedom 250 event appeared to be greeted with a resounding shrug by young voters, especially among conservatives in their 20s. In interviews, once-loyal supporters of the President interpreted these macho-themed proceedings as pandering, or a blatant distraction from the issues that have been dogging young voters, like concerns about cost of living and the war with Iran.

Aidan Hoffses, a 20-year-old conservative in Maine who is a casual UFC viewer, said he liked the idea of the event, describing it as “eye-grabbing” and “entertaining”.

But despite the appeal of the concept, Hoffses said he couldn’t shake off the strangeness underlying the spectacle.

“I honestly think it was a spit in the face to some of the people who are struggling right now,” Hoffses said, speaking of the event’s expensive production and celebrity-lined front row. He said that his family, who work in the construction trades, had been hit hard by the rising costs of things like building supplies and gas.

“Am I saying it was a bad event? No,” he said. “But it felt like another distraction from how Trump’s raised my gas prices.”

Don Valencia, 26, a Republican in New York real estate, refused to tune in for this reason.

“It was totally tone-deaf, considering what the country is going through, especially for young men and women,” said Valencia, who described himself as a supporter of the “America First” agenda and a former Trump supporter.

Like Hoffses, he also felt that the event had plenty of potential, noting that the aesthetics of the cage match were, well, “cool”. If not for the economic distress afflicting him and his peers, Valencia said, the event would have been an “imperial triumph”.

“I can’t afford a home. My groceries are more expensive than they were under Biden,” he said. “What do I have to celebrate?”

One of the President’s most vocal young critics, Nick Fuentes, the 27-year-old white nationalist who has urged his far-right followers to vote against Republicans in the coming midterms, conceded that this was the “best thing” the Trump administration has done to date.

“There’s a lot of reasons to hate Trump,” Fuentes said on a video stream. “Having an awesome fight at the White House isn’t one of them.”

Still, for some steadfast supporters of the President, like Benjamin Shrader, chair of the Austin Young Republicans club in Texas, the UFC Freedom 250 event flew under the radar.

“I didn’t even realise the fight was happening,” Shrader said with a laugh during a phone interview.

Shrader had spent the past week at the state’s annual GOP convention, held in Houston.

“We just finished up, and I didn’t honestly hear as much about the fight as I thought we would,” Shrader said. “I guess the young people who are politically involved were occupied.”

In an emailed statement, the White House extolled the event and the President’s focus on issues his young male voters care about.

“No other president in history has accomplished more for young men than President Trump, who is working tirelessly to create jobs, cool inflation, increase housing affordability and more,” Davis Ingle, a White House spokesman, wrote in a statement.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll concluded on June 8 found that just 16 per cent of Americans supported the event on June 14. The streaming-only event, which was hosted behind a Paramount+ paywall, faced daunting algorithmic headwinds as it competed with the virality of the New York Knicks’ NBA Finals victory the evening before.

And contrary to many assumptions, the UFC’s young male viewership is not quite a MAGA monolith. In its political diversity, the audience more closely resembles the highly sceptical viewership of, say, Joe Rogan’s podcast, according to recent research by Young Men Research Project.

It’s an audience with strong countercultural views, according to Charlie Sabgir, the director of the project, which studies the political habits of young men in the United States. These are the young men that initially flocked to Trump because he offered a “middle finger” to the political establishment.

“In 2024, that countercultural movement was Trump,” Sabgir said. “But increasingly with this demographic, Trump has become the establishment, and now they’re looking for other political options or disengaging completely.”

Rogan, in a podcast released June 17, sought to downplay the partisan bent of the fight.

“The right celebrates this as a win for masculinity and patriotism and all these different things,” he said. “OK, settle down. Everyone settle down. We should all be together.”

For many young voters, free speech was a key issue that drove men to support Trump in 2024. Today, it’s a topic that has become a raw nerve as some of them see crackdowns on speech within their own party, particularly surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein investigation and US support for Israel.

This tension was building in the days leading up to the fight on the White House lawn, when UFC fighter Sean Strickland, an MMA middleweight champion, claimed he had been barred from the event for his criticisms of the President.

“I made fun of Israel and Epstein,” Strickland wrote on Instagram.

Dana White, the president of the UFC, denied that Strickland had been barred from the event. “Of course Sean Strickland isn’t banned,” White told the media.

But images of the fighter being escorted off the grounds on June 14 by a phalanx of armed officers left a negative impression on some conservative voters, who saw Strickland as being punished for his views.

Jarrod Wright, a 26-year-old conservative podcaster who hosts The Wright Wing, said the incident “overshadowed” the entire event.

“I wasn’t opposed to the fight, but that gave me a real goofy feeling,” said Wright, who tuned in for the action on June 14. “It just seemed clear to me that if you speak out against Israel, the UFC and the White House will shut you down.”

Hoffses also voiced frustration with the incident. “You should be able to say whatever you want and not have repercussions,” he said.

For Nathan Remillard, 23, an America First streamer and Trump sceptic, the controversy highlighted just how little Trump was trying to appeal to young conservatives. “If this was an attempt to pander to us, he would’ve allowed Strickland to be there,” he said.

Despite Remillard’s personal disagreements with the administration’s handling of the Iran war and its support of Israel, he still viewed the fight as a political success: “It was done to spite the left, and it worked. I thought it was very cool, very patriotic. Everyone there seemed super happy. I even gambled on it.”

Remillard, who lives in Massachusetts, said he would have driven down to attend the weekend’s festivities, if not for one thing.

“I couldn’t afford it,” he said. NYTIMES

• This article originally appeared in The New York Times.