‘America’s backyard’ is no stranger to sports but Trump’s UFC spectacle shatters norms
The White House South Lawn, a historic stage for presidential pastimes, is set to host an unprecedented spectacle: a UFC bout.
President Donald Trump is marking his 80th birthday with a cage-fighting event this Sunday, a stark departure from its traditional, low-contact sporting history.
Historically, “America’s backyard” has seen presidents engage in gentler pursuits. Teddy Roosevelt boxed, Richard Nixon bowled, and Dwight D. Eisenhower installed a putting green. George H.W. Bush added a horseshoe pit, Herbert Hoover played a game named for himself to get more exercise, and George W. Bush opened the lawn for youth T-ball.
These events fostered community and bipartisanship, often geared toward children, like the annual Easter Egg Roll or the congressional picnic.
This weekend, however, the space will be dramatically transformed. An eight-sided, wire-mesh cage, an open overhead dome, large screens, and thousands of arena seats will dominate the lawn. The elaborate setup, featuring a complicated overhead lighting scheme dubbed “The Claw,” introduces a “blood sport” to a venue previously known for joyful, family-friendly activities.
The use of this space for such an event, feting a president who relishes it, illustrates yet another White House norm being gleefully discarded – or, in UFC parlance, “forced to tap out.” Trump has even begun suggesting the cage-fighting venue could become a permanent fixture on the South Lawn, further underscoring just how far from T-ball the White House has come.
“Sports has been central to presidents. I don’t know that it’s been quite the spectacle that it is with the Trump administration,” observed Michael Patrick Cullinane, senior historian at the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, highlighting the unique nature of this latest presidential sporting endeavor.
Many early presidents were talented athletes before taking office. Abraham Lincoln and William Howard Taft were celebrated young wrestlers. John Quincy Adams was fit enough to take daily naked swims in the Potomac River while in office.
But Teddy Roosevelt was the first to make sports a large part of White House life, installing a tennis court on the lawn. His wife, Edith, was concerned about his workload, and the grass court outside his office was meant to force more relaxation.
Cullinane, who is the author of Theodore Roosevelt and the Tennis Cabinet and is a history professor at Dickinson State University, said Roosevelt loved tennis and, though he didn’t play well, he did so “long and vigorously.”
Roosevelt would take the court daily at 3 p.m., rain or shine, for seemingly endless six-game sets against top aides. He also boxed, holding bouts in the White House that were far more intimate affairs than Sunday’s UFC fight. While sparring with his military aide Col. Daniel T. Moore in 1905, Roosevelt detached the retina of his left eye.
During a recent New York Post interview, Trump was asked about Roosevelt and replied that he “had a lot of energy, loved the outdoors.” He indicated that he knew about Roosevelt’s having boxed at the White House but didn’t comment on how the UFC event might compare.
Hoover used the lawn to play a combination of tennis and volleyball involving 6-pound (2.7-kilogram) medicine balls that White House physician Adm. Joel T. Boone was credited with inventing to improve his fitness. The game eventually became known as Hoover-ball.
His successor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, had an indoor pool built for polio therapy. Harry S. Truman ordered an old horseshoe pit removed from the White House grounds, but the first President Bush reinstalled it in 1989.
