WASHINGTON — UFC Freedom 250 on the White House South Lawn was a knockout, in more ways than one.
All seven of the fights on Sunday night’s card ended via TKO — no judges, no controversy, no kidding.
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 regain the lightweight title belt.
“I’m from America. Two hundred and fifty years ago, we were way bigger than six-to-one [underdogs],” 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’s window.
It was a stirring end to an evening where thousands of fight fans, left-wing protesters and Trump supporters descended on the nation’s capital to celebrate the commander in chief’s 80th birthday by watching some of the most exciting mixed martial artists going.
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 “U-S-A! U-S-A!”
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.
“I thought it was super entertaining,” 38-year-old Marcus Delaney of Columbus, Ohio, said as he left the watch party. “Some 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.”
“Maybe some of the hardcore fans were a little annoyed, but I wasn’t,” agreed Aaron Mercado, 45, of Fairfax, Va. “This was so much about spectacle. I wouldn’t have minded seeing these guys get tested a little more, but this wasn’t really about that. On an ordinary card, [seven] knockouts might leave you guessing how evenly matched everybody was. This just wasn’t that kind of card.”
“Oh, it’s great. It’s been great,” Javetchar Riez of Frederick, Md. told The Post as he headed for home. “I 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.”
No one would forget where they were on this night, and the organizers made sure of it.
After a brief delay to allow a threatened thunderstorm to pass — though nothing more than a drizzle fell on the District — Trump and UFC boss Dana White emerged onto the South Portico and walked to their seats before the Zac Brown Band played “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
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.
Several Cabinet heads — including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, War Secretary Pete Hegseth and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — 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.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison and other business leaders were also in attendance.
Hours before the scheduled 8 p.m. start time, MMA fans rushed toward checkpoints to enter the watch party — while protesters manned port-a-potties and invited passersby to wish the president a “crappy birthday.”
“We left at like 2:00 in the morning. None of us could sleep, we were so buzzed about this,” 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.
“It was still worth the trip just to be here. It’s like being outside the Super Bowl,” Drury told The Post.
“People are gonna bitch and moan about the cost, they’re gonna call it tacky, they’re gonna speak out against the brutality of the fighting itself. But even the haters are gonna watch it because that’s what Donald Trump’s all about, making it too hard to look away.”
“I 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,” said UFC fan Darius Boone, 43, of Prince George’s County, Md.
“I’m just here because I’m a fan and nothing like this has ever been done before,” Boone added. “Plus, it’s celebratory. I mean, come on, we’re celebrating a major milestone in the history of our country.
“Really, what’s more American than a $60 million claw on the White House lawn?”
“How many times do you get a chance to see something that’s never been done before, especially something so ridiculous?” agreed Nolan Haugen, 34, of Fargo, ND. “It’s like bringing Las Vegas to DC!”
“Of course I had to see it — just to say I was here,” he added. “I’m not even that big a fan of the UFC, although I’ll admit I’m a fan of the president. Happy birthday President Trump!”
DC local Nadia Rahman, 36, slammed the event as “completely tasteless.”
“It is historic, in its own way, because nothing else Trump has done in either term quite encapsulates who he is in one swoop. It’s strangely comical, except nothing about what I’m seeing is the least bit funny. It’s just like Trump’s ballroom,” she said.
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: “They fight, we feed.”
“We reject this endless, endless violent culture that the US has perpetuated,” said a volunteer who declined to give their name. “From 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.”
The National Park Service said in a court filing Tuesday that the UFC and its sponsors had spent “well over $60 million and tens of thousands of hours of labor” on the event. The NPS was responding to a lawsuit from the liberal Public Integrity Project, which alleged the fights amounted to a “corrupt use of our most sacred national monuments for private gain.”
DC federal judge Amit Mehta dismissed the suit Friday, finding that neither of Public Integrity Project’s clients were able to show they were “directly affected” by the fights.
