{"id":735638,"date":"2026-06-14T08:30:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T08:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/735638\/"},"modified":"2026-06-14T08:30:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T08:30:15","slug":"ufc-white-house-why-ilia-topuria-is-the-man-to-spoil-american-celebrations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/735638\/","title":{"rendered":"UFC White House: Why Ilia Topuria is the man to spoil American celebrations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Named UFC Freedom 250, Trump has predicted the show on the White House South Lawn to be “one of the highest-rated events ever in sports”, while the UFC has spent around $60m (\u00a344.3m) on the project.<\/p>\n

The White House has hosted recreational sports and events before but the spectacle will mark the first professional live sporting event to take place on the grounds.<\/p>\n

For an event so unique, the UFC was expected to announce a special card, and although Trump’s early prediction of there being “eight or nine title fights” did not come to fruition, it speaks volumes Topuria has been chosen as the headlining act.<\/p>\n

Wearing a suit when many fighters don casual wear, Topuria oozes the class and confidence of a champion as he speaks to the media.<\/p>\n

Answering questions in English and Spanish, Topuria smiles to himself with pride as he reminisces on the journey he’s taken to reach this position. <\/p>\n

“With all the accomplishments I’ve had, being in this event and headlining having started all this with my brother, my family and my entire team, is the fruit of hard work and makes me even happier and more grateful,” said Topuria.<\/p>\n

Aged seven, Topuria moved from Germany to Georgia with his parents before relocating to Spain around the age of 15 following the country’s 2008 conflict with Russia.<\/a><\/p>\n

It was there that Topuria’s MMA journey started when his father granted him and his brother Aleksandre, who is also a UFC fighter, permission to leave school and train full-time.<\/p>\n

Since then, Topuria has never looked back.<\/p>\n

In 2024, he dethroned Alexander Volkanovski – widely-regarded as one of the best featherweights of all time – to become the first Georgian champion in UFC history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Named UFC Freedom 250, Trump has predicted the show on the White House South Lawn to be “one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":735639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-735638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735638","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=735638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/735639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=735638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=735638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=735638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}