Matt Flegenheimer
speaker
78 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
Matt Flegenheimer’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
In February 2001, at a moment when, as White would say later, nobody was taking them seriously, Donald Trump took them seriously.
This is the moment. And obviously, White was grateful to be hosted by Trump to have the sort of legitimacy that came with having a major fight night at a Trump venue at that time. With that said, this is not an overnight success by any stretch. They're losing money. It's not taking off in any kind of rocket ship way.
But you can see some sort of early signs that Trump and White understand each other. Trump invites one of the fighters onto the Celebrity Apprentice for a season. And reality TV really plays a substantial role in the UFC's arc.
In 2005, there's a reality show, The Ultimate Fighter, that debuts.
It really helps drive interest and... complete the picture of these fighters for viewers. They get attached to these sort of biographies, these compelling stories.
That's just not my style. And it does really help the fights themselves get a sort of wider audience and gain more traction.
To such an extent, as the UFC grows, that Trump gets a little jealous. What did he do? So in 2008, Trump announces he's investing in his own rival mixed martial arts enterprise. And, you know, he's trying to sort of harness some of the energy that the UFC is clearly channeling. But his group is not long for this world, and his operation collapses pretty quickly.
But it's really a testament to the Trump-White friendship. The two of them are not necessarily the type to take kindly to business threats in their respective fields. And they stay on very good terms here. And in 2011, the UFC signs a big TV contract. Trump sees an article about it.
takes it, writes a message on it, and sends it to White saying, you know, congratulations, I always knew you were going to do it.
And sort of, you know, it's both a compliment and self-regarding about his own instincts that Trump saw it coming as well.
They spotted it together.
You know, in some ways, they approach politics from kind of a similar vantage point if you think about Trump before he was president. It's very transactional, not ideological politics.
You know, frankly, as the commissioner of a league that's trying to appeal to as many people as possible, in general, those sorts of figures wouldn't necessarily want to engage in partisan politics because the country is pretty evenly split and you're trying to cast a wide net.
Sure. But then Trump runs for office in 2016 and he has a request when he becomes the Republican nominee, which is that Dana White speak at his convention that summer. which obviously would place him very much in the middle of partisan politics in a way that had not been a part of his profile previously.
He has said he was advised against doing it for all the reasons you would expect, that it would alienate potential sponsors, it would alienate fans. So it was kind of high stakes for him because potentially it could alienate half his audience. Sure. But he does speak at that convention.
And White himself leaned into the idea that it was sort of strange that he was there.
You're probably wondering, what are you doing here? It was kind of his opening.
And he talked about the chance that Trump took on him in the UFC in 2001, his loyalty, his fighter instincts. He was the sort of validating voice that Trump wanted to have in that moment.
The sky doesn't fall. Right. And I think that's an important lesson that he learns in that moment. He goes out on this limb. He's advised against doing something much in the way that he was in his telling advised against giving it all to the UFC at the beginning. In this case, Dana White gives the speech at the RNC. It goes fine. And as a matter of fact, Trump's elected president.
And now he knows the president.
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