Dave Hanratty

Then you have to look at the idea of the weather in Washington, D.C.

I heard the podcaster Joe Rogan talking about bugs and mosquitoes and all sorts of other things that are going to be around.

And then, of course, there's the heat this time of the year.

We're going through global warming and a climate crisis, and we have no idea what the weather is going to be on the night.

So these things are always very opaque when it comes to the UFC.

They're very much a new sport.

They don't play by the usual rules of corporate PR and journalism.

They do and say whatever the hell they like.

So Dana White has claimed that they're going to invest somewhere between $30 and $60 million on this, and that the American taxpayer is not going to pay a cent of that.

I don't believe that for one second because I think that Donald Trump tends to use the American taxpayers' money pretty much like his own personal checking account at times.

And there's plenty of evidence of that over the last little while.

But I reckon it's going to cost about $60 million to put the whole thing together.

And I would say what's going to happen there is that you're going to have an awful lot of brands lining up to be associated with this.

So the UFC has gone from what Senator John McCain used to call human cockfighting to being pretty much a mainstream sport there now.

They have a TBL deal now with Paramount+, which basically makes it available to anybody who has the streaming service.

But that presents the UFC with a much bigger audience, which of course then is much more attractive to sponsors.

I'm not going to name any of the brands that are usually involved with them, but you're talking about very big American companies.

If we zoom out just another little bit as well, if you want, this is a good political move.

We've seen that Donald Trump engages in patronage.

If you're nice to him, if you donate to him, if you agree with him, you're going to be in his favor.