{"id":715569,"date":"2026-06-04T21:56:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T21:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/715569\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T21:56:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T21:56:10","slug":"government-is-supposed-to-protect-us-not-entertain-us-mma-fighter-sums-up-white-house-ufc-event","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/715569\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Government is supposed to protect us, not entertain us’: MMA fighter sums up White House UFC event"},"content":{"rendered":"

A mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter has been praised for perfectly summing up everything that\u2019s wrong with the controversial White House UFC event<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On 14 June, UFC \u2013 the largest MMA promoter in the world and run by Donald Trump<\/a>-ally Dana White \u2013 will hold an unprecedented event on the lawn of the White House<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It will be the first-ever sporting event held on White House grounds and, even among some fighters, it\u2019s not gone down too well.<\/p>\n

Speaking ahead of the event, American mixed martial artist Bryce Mitchell explained his thoughts and began by criticising the erosion of freedom of speech in the US currently<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething\u2019s going to change, because evil empires don\u2019t last forever, there\u2019s always a rebellion,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Despite saying he would like to be on the card, Mitchell continued to explain why he is uneasy about the government hosting the event.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the political side of things, not the UFC\u2019s business \u2026 What I think personally is that our government is desecrating its role in society by entertaining sports. <\/p>\n

\u201cOur government is to protect and serve the people and really should be as minimal as possible. And when you\u2019re doing all of this stuff, hosting sporting events, it\u2019s really outside of what the goal of the government was intended to be, because our tax dollars and resources are funding this operation.\u201d<\/p>\n

He went on: \u201c…That\u2019s my thoughts on it, is that the government is supposed to protect us, not entertain us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Plenty of people thought he was speaking facts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a coherent and respectable critique,\u201d one viewer commented.<\/p>\n

Another said: \u201cI couldn’t agree more. This guy is totally on point. I don’t pay attention to sports in general let alone UFC . But he’s got a lot of balls to speak up like he does and I appreciate that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Someone else said: \u201cBryce Mitchell is 100% correct. (Yeah, I just actually wrote that sentence.) <\/p>\n

\u201cThe government is not supposed to be on par with trashy reality TV shows. It\u2019s supposed to be boring. It\u2019s supposed to focus on real-life issues. It\u2019s supposed to just work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why not read\u2026<\/p>\n

Sign up<\/a> to our free indy100 weekly newsletter<\/p>\n

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter has been praised for perfectly summing up everything that\u2019s wrong with the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":715570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,958,2490,786,785,85,787,19542],"class_list":["post-715569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-dana-white","tag-donald-trump","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=715569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/715570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}