By Jacob Bogage
WASHINGTON, May 27 (Reuters) – A hulking metal arena is rising on the White House’s South Lawn as U.S. President Donald Trump pursues a spate of construction projects, and is set to host a night of cage fighting to mark the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence.
The mixed martial arts arena is being assembled on a stretch of the grounds used for presidents’ Marine One departures and annual Easter egg rolls and picnics, alongside tennis and basketball courts, a horseshoe pit and a garden honoring presidents’ children and grandchildren.
UFC, the professional mixed martial arts league run by Trump ally Dana White, will stage a night of bouts at the executive mansion on June 14 as part of the country’s independence celebrations. The event will coincide with Trump’s 80th birthday.
Four pieces of giant metal scaffolding now rise in front of the White House, looming over the Truman Balcony, a columned terrace overlooking the South Lawn. Video screens will be suspended from them.
“The octagon,” the eight-sided metal cage in which combatants punch, kick, elbow and grapple, will sit inside, ringed with a chain-link fence. White has dubbed the arena “The Claw,” he said in an interview with the New Yorker magazine.
More than 4,000 spectators will watch the fight from the arena, Trump and White have said, with many tickets going to military personnel. Officials are also planning viewing areas on the Ellipse, a 52-acre park south of the White House, with aims to accommodate an additional 100,000. Weigh-ins will be held at the Lincoln Memorial.
Trump, who plans to watch the bouts ringside, was an early backer of UFC when White took over the professional circuit in 2001. Trump allowed White to use his casino properties to host events when the fights were largely unregulated and, in some quarters, seen as seedy and unethical.
The late Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, a U.S. war hero and amateur boxer, derided the contests as “human cockfighting.”
His opposition, amplified by his influence in Congress, pushed UFC to seek state regulatory approval and build broader legitimacy in the early 2000s. In August 2025, it signed a $7.7 billion media rights deal with Paramount.
The White House complex is already home to another major construction project: Trump’s $400 million state ballroom that opponents have criticized as a vanity project but which the president says is needed for national security.
The MMA arena and the new ballroom are just two of the projects Trump has launched since returning to the White House in January 2025.
He has also ordered the renovation of Lafayette Square, a public park on the north side of the White House, and repainting the Reflecting Pool between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. He is also planning to build what he calls Independence Arch, reminiscent of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, except much bigger.
(Reporting by Jacob Bogage; editing by Ross Colvin and Cynthia Osterman)
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