WASHINGTON \u2013\u00a0Dana White says a lawsuit seeking to stop the UFC’s Sunday event at the White House did not catch the promotion off guard.<\/p>\n
On the contrary, White said the organization anticipated legal challenges to\u00a0UFC Freedom 250 (Paramount+).<\/p>\n
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“We were expecting a lawsuit,” White told MMA Junkie and other reporters Tuesday in Washington. “We expected everything coming into this event. We thought it would be sooner. We knew it was going to come. We didn’t know who or how, but we knew it was coming.”<\/p>\n
White did not comment further on the lawsuit, filed Sunday<\/a> by, in part, a military veteran from Virginia who says the UFC’s show at the White House is “deeply corrupt.” Donald Trump, the suit says, is giving his friend, White, and the UFC “unfettered access to the White House and Lincoln Memorial to stage a private, for-profit sports event, with all the promotional and branding opportunities that accompany such access.”<\/p>\n In essence, the UFC and White, along with its Paramount broadcast partner, are likely to experience an influx of revenue from the event \u2014 an illegality given the event is being staged on federal land and laws are in place to prevent such things from happening unless run by the government. But the event is being put on by the UFC.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n The suit was filed by Paul Romano of Virginia, a Vietnam veteran, and Susan Douglas, also of Virginia, who is credited as “a longtime civic activist and organizer.”<\/p>\n “The President arranged to hand two of America’s most cherished monuments to a private corporation so he and his allies could profit from them. That is corruption,” Douglas said in a news release from the Public Integrity Project<\/a>, which is backing the suit. “These monuments belong to all of us Americans, not to Dana White, not to advertisers like Crypto.com, and not to Donald Trump. We’re asking the court to enforce the law because the administration refuses to.”<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n The full lawsuit full document is available online<\/a>, as is the Public Integrity Project’s formal news release on the suit<\/a>.<\/p>\n UFC Freedom 250 features two title fights: Champ Ilia Topuria (17-0 MMA, 9-0 UFC) vs. interim Justin Gaethje (27-5 MMA, 10-5 UFC) for the undisputed lightweight title, and Alex Pereira (13-3 MMA, 10-2 UFC) in a quest to become a three-division UFC champion with the interim heavyweight title on the line against Ciryl Gane (13-2 MMA, 10-2 UFC). There are five other fights on the card.<\/p>\n