Donald Trump’s White House UFC Event Would Be Embarrassing Anywhere
Donald Trump’s White House UFC Event Would Be Embarrassing Anywhere
唐纳德·特朗普在白宫举办的 UFC 活动无论在哪里都会令人尴尬
With his history of involvement in pro wrestling and boxing and his zeal for garish excess—the man is a failed casino impresario, after all—it makes perfect sense that Donald Trump would want to celebrate both America’s birthday and his own with UFC cage fights on the White House lawn, sponsored by Monster Energy. If there’s been any surprise, it’s been in how the whole affair has so far failed to clear the lowest bar.
鉴于唐纳德·特朗普在职业摔角和拳击领域的参与历史，以及他对浮夸排场的狂热——毕竟他曾是一位失败的赌场大亨——他想要在白宫草坪上举办由“魔爪能量饮料”（Monster Energy）赞助的 UFC 笼斗赛，以此来庆祝美国国庆和他自己的生日，这完全在情理之中。如果说有什么令人惊讶的地方，那就是整件事到目前为止甚至连最低的门槛都没能达到。
The event’s promoters are certainly setting expectations high. “We’re putting on the most historic sporting event in history,” UFC hypeman and CEO Dana White told Time. One problem here is that this fight card would, in absence of the White House backdrop, not be the most historic scheduled for the next month, or an especially big or impressive one by the standards of any month. “Dignity” is not a word usually associated with fight promotion; even so.
活动的推广方显然将预期拉得很高。UFC 的首席执行官兼“宣传推手”达纳·怀特（Dana White）对《时代》周刊表示：“我们正在举办史上最具历史意义的体育赛事。”这里的一个问题是，如果脱离了白宫这一背景，这份对阵名单不仅算不上未来一个月内最重大的赛事，即便以任何月份的标准来看，它也称不上特别盛大或令人印象深刻。“尊严”一词通常与格斗推广挂不上钩，但即便如此，这次活动也显得格外荒唐。
On Thursday, multihyphenate Marco Rubio compared the founding of the Ultimate Fighting Championship to the moon landing while making a difficult-to-follow point about the uniquely American nature of the company. Absurd as this might be generally, it’s somehow more so specifically.
周四，身兼数职的马可·鲁比奥（Marco Rubio）在阐述该公司独特的美国属性时，竟将终极格斗冠军赛（UFC）的创立比作登月，其逻辑令人难以捉摸。这种说法在一般情况下已经够荒谬了，而在具体语境下则显得更加离谱。
The UFC, founded largely to showcase a Brazilian family’s jiu-jitsu skills, was not the first MMA promotion. It wasn’t even the first MMA promotion founded in 1993. (That honor goes to Pancrase, which itself was not even the first Japanese MMA promotion to ask “What if pro wrestling was real?”) White did not, as Rubio claimed, introduce the ideas of rules and weight classes to the sport. None of this made any sense.
UFC 最初创立主要是为了展示一个巴西家族的柔术技巧，它并非首个综合格斗（MMA）赛事组织。它甚至不是 1993 年成立的首个 MMA 组织。（这一荣誉属于 Pancrase，而它甚至也不是第一个提出“如果职业摔角是真的会怎样？”这一问题的日本 MMA 组织。）怀特也并没有像鲁比奥所声称的那样，为这项运动引入了规则和重量级的概念。这一切都毫无逻辑可言。
Rubio, in his capacity as secretary of state, was at an event with White in Washington, DC, to sign what was for some reason called a memorandum of understanding meant to bring the UFC’s unique virtues to the administration’s sports diplomacy. Perhaps Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov, whose deep ties to UFC fighters the UFC has long insisted do not contractually extend to the UFC itself, will play a part.
鲁比奥以国务卿的身份在华盛顿特区与怀特共同出席了一场活动，签署了一份不知为何被称为“谅解备忘录”的文件，旨在将 UFC 的“独特美德”引入政府的体育外交中。或许车臣军阀拉姆赞·卡德罗夫（Ramzan Kadyrov）也会参与其中——尽管 UFC 一直坚称他与 UFC 选手的深厚联系在合同层面并不延伸至 UFC 本身。
White is, to be fair, an innovator. His Power Slap show, which premiered in January 2023—the same month TMZ published a video of him slapping his wife in public—promotes a genuinely novel and uniquely American sport consisting solely of people attempting to concuss each other.
平心而论，怀特确实是一位创新者。他的《Power Slap》（力量拍击）节目于 2023 年 1 月首播——就在同一个月，TMZ 发布了一段他在公共场合掌掴妻子的视频——该节目推广了一项真正新颖且独特的美国运动，其内容仅仅是人们试图将对方击打至脑震荡。
Now, he’s disrupting in the bombast space by claiming that he expects “Super Bowl type numbers” for Sunday’s event. (Netflix, which asserts that its recent Ronda Rousey fight was the most-watched MMA event of all time, pegged peak US viewership at 11.6 million—less than 10 percent of the average audience for the most recent Super Bowl.)
现在，他声称预计周日的活动将达到“超级碗级别的收视数据”，以此在夸大其词的领域进行“颠覆”。（Netflix 曾宣称其近期播出的隆达·鲁西（Ronda Rousey）比赛是史上观看人数最多的 MMA 赛事，其美国峰值收视人数为 1160 万——不到最近一届超级碗平均观众人数的 10%。）
Certainly no expense has been spared for the ostensible most historic event in history. Looking at the White House lawn, you’d be forgiven for thinking organizers literally transported in the contents of a Meta-branded warehouse from Las Vegas and dumped it there.
为了这场所谓的“史上最具历史意义的赛事”，主办方确实不惜血本。看着白宫草坪，如果你以为组织者是从拉斯维加斯直接搬来了一个 Meta 品牌的仓库并将其倾倒在那里，那也是情有可原的。
If UFC Freedom 250 fails to be watched by every person in the US, that may be because, for a card featuring fighters making their entrances from the Oval Office, it’s not exactly thrilling. A generous descriptor would be … fine. In the main event, undefeated 155-pound champion Ilia Topuria will fight interim 155-pound champion Justin Gaethje, who’s been as reliably entertaining a fighter as there is for years. There will be an interim heavyweight title bout and several other fights as well, nearly all of them featuring ranked fighters (and none of them featuring women). Probably relatively few people who aren’t familiar with the pros and cons of various betting apps will be wildly excited by the offerings, but then plenty of people are, and it should be a solid night of action.
如果“UFC 自由 250”没能被全美每个人观看，那可能是因为对于一场选手从椭圆形办公室出场的比赛来说，它实在不够刺激。用一个宽容的词来形容就是……还行。在主赛中，不败的 155 磅冠军伊利亚·托普里亚（Ilia Topuria）将对阵 155 磅临时冠军贾斯汀·盖奇（Justin Gaethje），后者多年来一直是一位极其稳定的娱乐型选手。此外还有一场重量级临时冠军赛和其他几场比赛，几乎所有参赛者都是排名选手（且没有女性选手）。对于那些不熟悉各种博彩应用优缺点的人来说，这些比赛可能很难让他们感到狂热，但确实有很多人对此感兴趣，这应该会是一个扎实的格斗之夜。
Why the UFC’s top, or at least most famous, fighters won’t be part of the spectacle is at once shrouded in opacity and utterly obvious.
为什么 UFC 的顶级选手，或者至少是最著名的选手没有参与这场盛会，这既笼罩在不透明之中，又显得极其显而易见。
Jon Jones, widely regarded as the greatest fighter of all time (and someone with an extensive history of largely driving-related legal issues), will not be fighting. White has claimed there were no negotiations to do so; Jones, more credibly, claims that the UFC, which under White’s watch has pioneered methods of wage suppression that led to the $375 million settlement of a class-action antitrust suit with fighters, lowballed him.
被广泛认为是史上最伟大格斗选手的乔恩·琼斯（Jon Jones）（他有着大量与驾驶相关的法律纠纷记录）将不会参赛。怀特声称双方从未进行过谈判；而琼斯则更可信地表示，在怀特的领导下，UFC 开创了工资压榨手段，导致了与选手之间 3.75 亿美元的反垄断集体诉讼和解，而 UFC 给他的报价太低了。
The UFC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
UFC 没有立即回应置评请求。
Conor McGregor, who remains the UFC’s biggest star despite not having fought in five years—he’s spent the interim period being found liable in a civil case for sexual assault and being a totem for the international far right—will also not be fighting. As WIRED has reported, the White House asserts this is because he hasn’t been in an anti-doping pool long enough to be eligible for a fight and because Trump doesn’t want to be seen as favoring specific fighters. Oddly enough, McGregor—whose relationship to anti-doping protocols was the subject of a New York Times investigation this week—is scheduled for a fight in early July, which White has said he expects to break the UFC’s all-time gate record.
康纳·麦格雷戈（Conor McGregor）尽管五年未参赛，但仍是 UFC 的最大明星——他在这一期间因性侵民事案件被判有罪，并成为了国际极右翼的象征——他也将不会参赛。正如《连线》（WIRED）所报道的，白宫声称这是因为他进入反兴奋剂检测池的时间不够长，无法获得参赛资格，且特朗普不希望被视为偏袒特定选手。奇怪的是，麦格雷戈——他与反兴奋剂协议的关系本周成为了《纽约时报》调查的对象——已定于 7 月初进行一场比赛，怀特称他预计这场比赛将打破 UFC 的历史门票收入纪录。
UFC Freedom 250 will not be breaking any gate records because the tickets are free, with Trump, White, and Ari Emanuel—boss of TKO, which owns both the UFC and World Wrestling Entertainment—controlling about 1,900 tickets between them. Much of the rest of the crowd will apparently be filled out by active servicemembers with a waist-to-height ratio of less than 0.55. (Trump’s waist size is not public, but at 6′3″ and with his most recent physical listing him at 238 pounds, he would be unlikely to qualify.)
“UFC 自由 250”不会打破任何门票纪录，因为门票是免费的。特朗普、怀特以及拥有 UFC 和世界摔角娱乐（WWE）的 TKO 公司老板阿里·伊曼纽尔（Ari Emanuel）共同掌握了约 1900 张门票。其余大部分观众显然将由腰高比小于 0.55 的现役军人填补。（特朗普的腰围并未公开，但以他 6 英尺 3 英寸的身高和最近体检报告中 238 磅的体重来看，他不太可能符合这一标准。）
An evening thunderstorm, which White has vowed will not stop the fights, is forecast for Sunday. It would be just the latest weather-related disaster for Emanuel’s empire. (A 3,000-square-foot American flag that flew above the headquarters of WWE, which boasts Trump among the members of its Hall of Fame, was blown into power lines near a train station in Stamford, Connecticut, this past weekend, making about 40,000 people lose power for most of Sunday afternoon.)
预报显示周日晚上会有雷阵雨，怀特誓言这不会阻止比赛进行。这将是伊曼纽尔商业帝国遭遇的最新一起与天气相关的灾难。（上周末，一面悬挂在 WWE 总部上方的 3000 平方英尺的美国国旗——特朗普是 WWE 名人堂成员——被吹到了康涅狄格州斯坦福德火车站附近的电线上，导致约 4 万人在周日下午大部分时间里断电。）