Speech: Trump, the UFC, and the new world order in sports

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I’d had less than two hours of sleep when I took the stage at Play the Game 2025, staring out at more than 500 attendees and a topic that seems to follow me everywhere: Donald Trump and the UFC.

The event, which is currently taking place in Tampere, Finland, brought together intrepid journalists, activists, whistleblowers, athletes, and academics with the shared objective of delving into the shadowy corners of the sports world. For example, my speech and panel followed an opening keynote by Maggie Nichols, the former elite American gymnast and NCAA champion who became a key whistleblower in exposing Larry Nassar’s abuse, and a Q&A discussion with Caster Semenya, the two-time Olympic champion from South Africa whose career has been defined by both her dominance on the track and her legal battles over gender and eligibility rules in sport.

I shared the stage with some of the most respected names in the sports-politics landscape, including Jules Boykoff, an American author and academic who is the foremost expert on the politics of the Olympic Games; Minky Worden, Human Rights Watch’s Director of Global Initiatives and one of the most vocal advocates in the space; and , the award-winning journalist and scholar who runs the excellent .

The way these sessions work is that each speaker is invited to give a 10-minute talk on a topic tied to the themes of the session, in this case, the “battle between sports and politics on U.S. soil.” While several of my esteemed colleagues focused on the upcoming 2026 FIFA World Cup and the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, I retreated to the familiar world of cagefighting, explaining to the audience how the UFC helped put Trump back in the White House. I also introduced