Two thousand years ago, Roman emperors celebrated their birthdays with gladiator shows. The tradition lives on in President Donald Trump, who for his eightieth birthday will host mixed martial arts (MMA) fights at the White House. On Sunday, June 14, in an event promoted by the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), fighters will square off in front of a 4,500-person audience handpicked by Trump. The event, dubbed UFC Freedom 250, doubles as a celebration of Trump’s birthday and the country’s 250th anniversary.

Trump has spent years cultivating the UFC world as a cultural home base, using it to associate himself with toughness, violence, and dominance — and to pull angry young men into his orbit. The president not only frequents UFC events but gets his own entrance music, a ritual normally reserved for fighters. He has a close, decades-long friendship with Dana White, the UFC’s president, who introduced him at the 2024 Republican National Convention. Many of Trump’s highest-profile boosters, like the podcaster Joe Rogan, have deep roots in the UFC world. If it’s true, as the late right-wing pundit Andrew Breitbart said, that politics is downhill from culture, then much of MAGA is downhill from the UFC.

But there’s more to the story. Behind the scenes, UFC Freedom 250 is a tribute to the would-be emperor gifted by capital interests angling to monopolize the fight-sport industry, in alliance with some of the richest people in the world. It’s likely to be a pivotal moment in the consolidation of the fight-sport industry in a small number of enormously powerful hands.