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To hear White tell it over this series of interviews, Trump saved UFC from the cultural margins, the threat of John McCain<\/a>, who infamously described the sport as \u201chuman cockfighting\u201d amid his campaign to ban it, and dire financial straits. It is an echo of the speech White gave at the 2016 Republican National Convention after Trump\u2019s political star had begun to rise. \u201cArenas around the world refused to host our events,\u201d White told the audience. \u201cNobody took us seriously. Nobody. Except Donald Trump \u2026 I will always be so grateful to him for standing with us in those early days, so tonight I stand with Donald Trump.\u201d (Trump, for his part, said in the Oval Office this year, \u201cThey couldn\u2019t get any arenas because it was so violent. I was able to give them the first four or five fights.\u201d)<\/p>\n Amid the influx of attention on White and Trump\u2019s relationship, Werme has been making the case on social media, along with a vocal corner of UFC aficionados and journalists, that it was never so straightforwardly fruitful. \u201cFormer head of UFC PR here,\u201d Ant Evans wrote<\/a> on X last month. \u201cTrump\u2019s name didn\u2019t appear in a single press release, one-sheet briefing, talking point, UFC-produced document, book, or piece of content before 2016 \u2026 [White\u2019s] narrative is simply false.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDana says Trump called and bailed them out by offering the Taj to host their first show,\u201d Werme told me. \u201cComplete nonsense.\u201d (\u201cWhat is the point of this story?\u201d White House spokesman Davis Ingle said when reached for comment. \u201cDoes someone need to attend every single event to have a relationship?\u201d A representative for the UFC didn\u2019t immediately return a request for comment.)<\/p>\n Andrew Caballero-Reynolds\/AFP via Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n Werme\u2019s history with the sport stretches back to 1995, when the promotion was owned by the defunct pay-per-view company Semaphore Entertainment Group (SEG), and he stayed on when Zuffa, a holding company owned by Las Vegas<\/a> casino magnates Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, acquired UFC in January 2001 and appointed White as president. (Zuffa sold UFC to Emanuel-led buyers for $4 billion in 2016.) Not only had the February 2001 show at Trump\u2019s Atlantic City casino, Werme told me, been arranged months prior to Zuffa\u2019s acquisition\u2014and prior to White assuming his new UFC role\u2014but SEG had had another show at the venue the year prior. \u201cDana says when they bought the UFC they had nowhere to do the show as arenas did not want the event,\u201d Werme says, describing this too as \u201ccomplete nonsense.\u201d (In February 2001, UFC was banned in 36 states, but New Jersey was not one of them, and as Werme tells me, SEG did shows throughout the country as well as in Brazil and Japan.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n