Dana White and his team are inching closer and closer to completing plans for UFC White House.
The June 14 event is a little over a month away now and White recently provided an update to Fox News regarding who will be in attendance at the historic event, what the experience will be like for fans watching at the nearby Ellipse, and how the UFC will deal with weather issues as it holds a rare outdoor show.
In addition to President Donald Trump and members of his administration and various VIPs, White says there will be over 4,000 members of the military invited to watch the event headlined by a lightweight championship unification bout between Ilia Topuria and Justin Gaethje.
“So there’s going to be 4,300 people there, I just literally went over it right now,” White said in an interview that was taped ahead of UFC 327. “4,300 people and most of them will be military.”
The vast majority of fans can watch UFC White House at the Ellipse park, where a stadium setup is currently being constructed to accommodate the extended audience. Fox News revealed new renderings of what Ellipse might look like on June 14, which you can see below:
Fox News
Fox News
“Across the street is the Ellipse and for those who don’t know, the Ellipse is a massive park,” White said. “You’ll be able to see the fight from the Ellipse, but we have screens, we’ve got stages, we have music, we have activations over there.
“If you are a fan of the UFC, and especially if you have never been to Washington, D.C., we’re going to give away about 85,000 tickets and there’s a process you have to register for tickets and they’re free, but you should come to Washington, D.C., that week, the week of the fight. We’re going to be doing all kinds of things in D.C. for fans and it’s really a cool city for probably most people have never been and if you’re a UFC fan this is absolutely, positively the time to come to D.C.”
White has frequently expressed trepidation over holding events outdoors due to the possibility that an event could be affected by unpredictable and hazardous weather. The UFC has held events outdoors in Abu Dhabi, but that is a region where there is far less variance with the weather especially in regards to it possibly affecting a show.
Worst comes to worst, White predicts they will be able to move the UFC White House start time if there is the threat of thunder.
“I hate outdoors,” White said. “Outdoors is just way too unpredictable and we’ve gone over this. If it rains, we’re going. If it snows, we’re going. The only that will stop us is lightning, but we’re working with the military. So the military knows the weather 10 days out and they’ll notify us every two hours 10 days out. Seven days out, they’ll notify us every hour. Also, there’s another company that does it for concerts and things like that, they’re very good, too.
“The only thing that kills us is lightning. So we could move the event two hours earlier, two hours after. These are all things that we’ll be playing with the week of the event on top of all the other things that we’ll have going on, which we never had to deal with. The only time I’d ever agreed to do an outdoor event was in Abu Dhabi, which, I could be the weatherman in Abu Dhabi, and I would be right every time.”
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