Dana White has rubbished wild conspiracy theories that secret military technology was deployed to divert a storm that was expected to hit the White House during the UFC Freedom 250.
UFC took over the South Lawn on June 14 for an astonishing event that saw President Donald Trump perform his own walkout from the Oval Office before taking his seat cageside.
For large parts of the evening, it appeared bad weather would ruin the momentous event. But the storms somehow stayed away, with rain falling near Washington D.C. but avoiding the scene of the UFC’s most unique event.
The nature of the near-miss with the storms has seen some wild conspiracy theories rage on Reddit and elsewhere online.
Some have suggested that because the event was taking place at the White House and a big part of Trump’s America 250 celebrations, secret tactics were deployed to ensure the weather didn’t ruin it.
But confronted with the idea that some people believe military technology was used to somehow divert the course of the storm, White laughed and told TMZ: ‘Of course they do.
The UFC Freedom 250 was hosted on the White House lawn in a stunning June 19 spectacle
Dana White hailed the event as a huge success with President Donald Trump playing a key role
Storms threatened to ruin the event but somehow stayed away, leading to conspiracy theories
‘One of my longtime friends, his name is Skipper Kelp, he does the scoring on Zuffa Boxing for us.
‘The biggest conspiracy theorist I’ve ever met in my life. Every night when we go to dinner I have to listen to this crazy s*** that he comes up with, so I’m sure Skip probably believes that we used some secret military stuff to break up the storm.
‘I can promise you that did not happen. We thought it was hitting us. The president thought it was hitting us.
‘We weren’t using like the Channel 4 weather guy, right? We had military meteorologists all over this thing and this [meteorologist] was telling us we’re going to get hit.
‘I get how these things happen and how they start, right? There was absolutely no military, you know, right? We thought we were getting hit.’
The event concluded with Justin Gaethje beating Ilia Topuria for the UFC lightweight championship, after Ciryl Gane had knocked out Alex Pereira for the interim heavyweight championship in the co-main event.
White insisted the event was and will always be the highlight of his time in charge of UFC.
‘There’s no doubt about it,’ he said. ‘It was such an incredible night, and the way that the story played out with the storm breaking and going around the White House.
‘Obviously my relationship with the President.., the amount of people that showed up, the highlights from the thing, America’s 250th birthday. Nothing’s going to beat that.’
