I couldn’t believe I was there, on the South Lawn of the White House, preparing to watch 14 men beat each other bloody in celebration of the president’s 80th birthday, Flag Day and the semiquincentennial of our great nation. It was Donald Trump’s party of choice: a loud, brash, no-holds-barred, populist revel clearly designed to horrify the stuffy elites — including liberal moms like me.
But the crowd was having a ball.
My two younger sons, 15 and 18, and I had come to Washington to witness “the most historic sporting event in history” — U.F.C. Freedom 250 — thanks to my uncle, the chief executive of ScottsMiracle-Gro, a sponsor that promised to reseed the South Lawn once the event’s 92-foot-tall, 154-foot-wide steel behemoth is removed. (My oldest son, 22, wanted nothing to do with the affair.)
Our night started around 6:30 at a pre-event reception atop the Hotel Washington, replete with personalized laser-engraved key chains, massage stations, IVs offering hydration and vitamin boosts and bars towering with Monster Energy drinks, pork bao buns and rainbow-colored candies. We waited there with other V.I.P.s for the forecast storms to pass. About 8:30 we descended into heavily guarded streets, past security and onto the White House lawn.
As we entered under the Claw, strobes knifing across the darkening sky, clouds of mist drifting through the well-dressed crowds, the Marine Band performing patriotic songs, and an endless stream of videos booming America’s virtues from ginormous screens overhead, it felt like a fever dream. There we were, standing close enough to make out the egg-and-dart detail on the White House’s ionic columns, listening to thousands of people sing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President.”
“I got three things to say,” shouted an announcer before the festivities began, the scent of Bud Light wafting in the swampy air. “God bless our troops, God bless America and, gentlemen, start your engines!”
Over the next four-plus hours, amid thundering military flyovers and prancing “Octagon Girls” in spangled red, white and blue Wonder Woman-adjacent get-ups, it didn’t get any less weird. Fists flew, body blows rained and head shots pounded like relentless jackhammers as the stands shook with incessant chants of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” followed by cacophonies of encouragement and impassioned pleas for ever more violence, including shouts of “Let’s see some blood!” “Hurt each other!” “Finish him!” “Make it dirty!” and “Never submit!”
Surreal as it was, I knew why I was there and what I had to do: endure the spectacle, for my kids, at least for tonight.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” my 15-year-old screamed at me moments after the first bout ended. “The fact that we get to live this? I mean, it’s actually insane!”
I nodded and smiled because it was. It was truly and actually insane.
I have been an Ultimate Fighting Championship mom for five months now, something I’d never intended to be. I became aware of my teenage sons’ fascination with the sport on Jan. 31, the night of the Diego Lopes-Alexander Volkanovski featherweight title fight, when they wouldn’t stop talking about it. I had hoped it would be a short-lived interest, which I proceeded to basically ignore, assuming it was just another icky, adolescent phase.
When I realized it wasn’t — that U.F.C. had twisted its legs around their necks and refused to let go — I figured I had two choices: I could either lecture, pointing out what seemed to me to be the obvious horrors of “human cockfighting,” as Senator John McCain once called it, or begin hosting (or at least tolerating) Fight Nights.
And thus ensued our new Saturday night normal. My kids munch on snacks while two savages — that’s what they call themselves and each other, as compliments — exchange menacing threats and theatrical insults, clearly inspired by the cocky, campy posturing of professional wrestling.
Most of the U.F.C. is just windup, a couple of guys chasing each other around a cage, before eventually punching, kicking, kneeing, choking and sometimes literally crushing each other into submission (though rest assured, no biting, “ball hits” or eye pokes are allowed). The victor, covered in blood and sweat, sometimes makes a reference to Jesus Christ, even while peacocking like a vengeful barbarian.
I did wonder, one Saturday night, and not for the first time, how this could have happened: my angelic sons transfixed, gleeful, even, at this gaudy brutality. How could I, a feminist, a lefty, the daughter of two activists who risked their lives and freedom to fight for the dignity of others, have raised two baby gladiators?
Maybe I’d been deluding myself all these years, believing I’d somehow inoculated them against the likes of Joe Rogan, Andrew Tate and the “new masculinist” virus that has been infecting teenage boys, no matter how well raised by thoughtful, caring parents who just want the world to be a more just and equitable place?
But while my kids insist that they have not fallen prey to the divisive content creators of the world, the impact of the so-called manosphere is unmistakable. My friends and I talk about it all the time: our sons’ confusion over how to navigate a world that demands contradictory things from them. They are afraid of being insensitive, of taking up too much space, of accidentally saying or doing the wrong thing, of being accused of having ”toxic masculinity,” and at the same time, worried they will appear “weak,” “soft” like “little bitches” if they express too much sensitivity.
Could it be, I worried, that they were looking to these never-say-sorry, take-what’s-yours men to show them how to beat the haters and “win at life”?
So I decided to ask them: Can you tell me what, exactly, you like about ultimate fighting? Given the family you grew up in, the communities you’ve been surrounded by, are you conflicted about following a sport so intertwined with patriarchal values? And how do you two evidently kind and decent boys rationalize taking so much pleasure in so much pain?
I couldn’t get my 18-year-old to talk about it, but my 15-year-old — a thoughtful kid who last week told me, “U.F.C. literally takes up 99 percent of my brain space” — was happy to oblige. He explained in excruciating detail the various weight classes and fighting techniques before showing me videos of musclebound men with ironic nicknames like “Fluffy” and not-so-ironic nicknames like “Thug Nasty” pummeling and choking their way to glory.
Unmoved, I pressed him, and he found footage of these same men talking about their lives, their wives, their parents and their children. Their histories were so interesting, he said. Many of them came from nothing, overcame substance and physical abuse, developed incredible skills, worked really hard and became great at what they do. How can you not appreciate and respect that, he asked me in return?
“There’s almost this superhero-like thing about them,” he said, pulling up TikToks of some of his favorite fighters, showing me examples of their personas and back stories. “I know it’s marketing, I really do, but their characters are so entertaining and their work ethic really impresses me.”
Another thing he finds compelling about U.F.C., he said, is how “real” it is. Most professional sports are “fictional” made-up games in which people throw or kick or hit round rubber things in order to amuse themselves and a bunch of strangers.
Fighting, he pointed out, is primal, “in our blood,” something “maybe we don’t want to admit it, but we all want to do.” Don’t most of us, at some point, just want to punch someone in the face, he asked? Or wail on their chest until an impartial authority says we’re right, they’re wrong, we win and they lose?
Still, he said, what he finds most inspiring is the pride the fighters take in themselves.
“It’s refreshing to see someone just be who they are. I mean, it motivates me,” he explained. “But, Mom, I want you to know I don’t want to be them. I just think it’s cool how much they seem to like themselves, because it makes me and everyone else like them, too.”
Honestly, I had hoped that bringing my kids to a U.F.C. fight, letting them witness the brutality up close, would end their obsession. But while my 15-year-old confessed that watching his favorite fighters get beaten half blind right in front of him, as the crowd begged the worried officials to “Let them fight! Let them fight!,” was painful, he said the night was more than he ever could have wished for.
“I am just overcome with emotion,” he told me, and when I asked what kind, he cried: “Every kind!”
“Seeing it right in front of you, it’s so much more violent and becomes real in a different way,” he said. “I felt so bad for the fighters, and it made me realize that watching it on a screen makes it lose all its humanity. I don’t think I’ll ever look at it the same way again, but I still love U.F.C. In fact, I love it more than ever!”
My 18-year-old agreed.
“This was the peak, the pinnacle of my life!” he gushed as we headed for the exit, fireworks exploding overhead. “I love Diego Lopes; he’s just so happy and kind. And I fist-bumped Shane Gillis, so, really, I could die right now and be happy!”
“But did you have fun?” my younger son asked me as we climbed into a car to the airport.
“Yes and no,” I said. “I found it really hard to watch and be part of, but I enjoyed how much you enjoyed it. And hey, I don’t need to love everything you love. Really, I just need to love you.”
It’s probably also important to acknowledge that my sons have almost no memory of a time when the political culture and conversation was not centered around Donald Trump in some way. This is the world they grew up in, the world they’ve inherited: a world where a bloody U.F.C. fight on the South Lawn of the White House is something that happened on the president’s birthday, in celebration of America.
And it was, as my boys would say, totally sick, bro.
Hope Reeves is a freelance journalist.
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