It was 2012, and Keta Meggett was an actor in Los Angeles trying to land an audition. There was one problem: The audition was in two days and the role required grappling — the art of controlling an opponent through physical holds, locks and leverage — but she had no idea what that was, let alone how to do it. A quick Google search told her it was related to Brazilian jiu-jitsu, so she reached out to a friend who could teach her the basics.
She met him at a 24 Hour Fitness, learned some fighting positions and then went to her audition. She booked the gig, but she wanted to know more. She sat in on jiu-jitsu classes and was “blown away.”
“I could not understand what I was looking at,” said Meggett, now 47. “I didn’t know our bodies could do that. I was watching girls protect themselves. I was watching girls choke out guys, and it was the most magical thing that I had ever experienced and watched. I couldn’t wait to be a part of it.”
Meggett started training and eventually picked up Muay Thai, which focuses more on stand-up striking. She began competing, became a world champion and, in 2017, opened a gym. Now, her fiancé runs a men’s program at the gym while Meggett focuses on women and children.
“I need every girl that I ever meet to know that there’s a place where she can come train that doesn’t smell like someone’s ass,” Meggett said. “And I wanted to create my own space where women and girls can come and do all the things that the boys are doing and feel good, incredible.”
Meggett is a huge fan of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), the world’s premier professional mixed martial arts (MMA) organization. But, she said, she’s not happy about the upcoming fight on the White House lawn — a reportedly $60 million event she sees as a “complete mockery of politics and the White House.”
“It’s just trash,” Meggett said. “What could have been done with that money? A lot more. A lot more to help a lot of women and children and other fighters and underprivileged people.”
The White House and UFC
Last year, President Donald Trump hosted a military parade in Washington, D.C., to celebrate his birthday and the birthday of the Army. This year, he’s celebrating his 80th birthday and the country’s 250th with a UFC match on the South Lawn on Sunday.
The UFC has close ties to the Trump administration: The president and his family members are frequently seen cageside at matches. UFC founder Dana White introduced Trump before he delivered his nomination acceptance speech at the 2024 Republican National Convention. Irish UFC fighter Conor McGregor visited Trump at the White House for St. Patrick’s Day last year, where he spoke about the “illegal immigration racket running ravage [sic]” in Ireland, echoing Trump’s own anti-immigration rhetoric. (Trump was criticized for hosting and warmly welcoming McGregor to the White House given that McGregor was found by a Dublin jury last year to be civilly liable for raping a woman in a hotel room; McGregor has denied the allegation and lost his appeal. Trump himself was found liable for sexual abuse in 2023.)
Another connection between the Trump administration and UFC? Their embrace of a certain brand of masculinity. Trump entered the 2024 RNC to “A Man’s Man’s Man’s World”; he has spoken about his desire to “protect women”; he recently called a Coast Guard cadet to the stage during graduation to publicly admire his muscles. For his part, White, in a recent “60 Minutes” interview, called the sport “unapologetically masculine.”
Still, women fans are growing in numbers and are increasingly important to the organization’s bottom line. The UFC started allowing women to fight in 2013 and within five years, some women fighters were driving viewership, on multiple occasions outdrawing men by up to 21 percent on network television. And coming out of the pandemic, there was a 77 percent growth in the business, largely fueled by women, according to White in an interview with David Remnick on “The New Yorker Radio Hour” podcast.
On NPR’s “Newsmakers” podcast, White said he created Sunday’s lineup to tell the story of America as a nation of immigrants, a way to celebrate the American dream actualized. The all-men card has fighters from a variety of backgrounds, including a man of dual Georgian and Spanish citizenship, an American from Arizona whose mother is of Mexican descent and a Brazilian whose home base now is in Connecticut. Speaking with Time magazine recently, White stressed that he tried to get a women’s fight on the card for the American 250 event: “We did try to make a women’s fight. We couldn’t get it done.”
The fandom
On MMA subreddits, women and men alike discuss what’s bringing so many women into UFC. Often, men say their wives or girlfriends started watching because they were; women say they started watching because their husbands and boyfriends are. Many women on these subreddits describe loving the adrenaline. They talk about loving going deep on researching how different fighters approach a match. They talk about how much they become invested in the fighters and their stories. (The women on these subreddits also are often quick to point out that no, they don’t watch UFC because it is heavy on half-naked men.)
For women like Meggett, it’s not about the men. It’s about women’s empowerment, which is reflected in her gym’s name: Team Bully Buster. At 5’3” and 115 pounds, Meggett said she was severely bullied her freshman year of high school and left with broken bones and depression after an assault. The UFC and particularly Ronda Rousey — the first woman UFC champion and a pioneer for the sport — helped her discover how to get stronger.
(Courtesy of Keta Meggett)
“At that point, it was like, ‘Oh my God, I found my lane,’” Meggett said. “This is the lane I want to be in, and I want to know how to do this. I want to know how to protect myself. I want to know how to get someone off of me, and I want to know how to tell everyone else how to do it because why isn’t this readily available?”
Audrey Verret, 35, originally started watching UFC in her 20s out of what she calls “strategic curiosity.”
She was working in finance, and many of the men in leadership were fans; she figured that developing some common interests would help her in her career. But she quickly realized that a sport she expected to be “wildly brutal and under-stimulating” was in fact “about discipline, about mastery, about character, about strategic planning.”
It’s why she’s now a real fan — and will be watching this weekend’s fight at the White House.
She also noted that she would challenge people’s biases when they would assume someone like her — “everything I’ve done my entire life revolves around inclusivity” — would not be tuning in. After all, for her UFC is about people who are the physical embodiment of their own values.
She thinks if a sitting president were celebrating his birthday with a more “traditional” activity, “no one would bat an eye at it.”
Rachel Allison, a sociology professor at Mississippi State University who studies the status of women in U.S. elite sport, said that sports have always been political — and that fans have always had to navigate this. For example, Allison pointed to 2019, when U.S. soccer player Megan Rapinoe, an outspoken LGBTQ+ advocate, said she would not go to Trump’s White House if the team won the World Cup.
Allison said her research at the time found that soccer fans who were also Trump supporters felt less welcome in the fan community and made some question whether the sport was for them.
“Left-leaning UFC fans may be a little more dismayed by what they’re seeing right now,” Allison said. “Sport has always been political, but this is such a direct overt politicization of sport. It’s like the politics here are slapping us in the face.”
Bringing in new fans
One factor bringing in more young women fans: TikTok. White himself orchestrated an official content creator-promoter partnership with Nina-Marie Daniele, also known as Nina Drama. She is a Millennial woman and the 2018 Playboy Playmate of the Year who gets lots of access to fighters and is able to chat with the guys cageside and during training; the vibe is if your best friend also happened to be best friends with every UFC boldface name.
On TikTok, Daniele has built up her base of 5.9 million followers through her videos featuring UFC fighters doing light comedy bits with her, often as she trains alongside them. Daniele is attending the White House fight. She posted a video on Tuesday asking followers to help her pick her dress for the occasion. This week she’s also tried to best Diego Lopes in a Brazilian jiu-jitsu submission challenge (she lost), and let Alex Pereira kick her repeatedly, then showed off her bruises. (Both Pereira and Lopes are appearing on the White House card.)
Daniele did not reply to a request for comment.
Social media has also brought in many women fans who are interested in the values and stories the fighters share.
Paddy “The Baddy” Pimblett, currently ranked sixth in the lightweight class of UFC, is a name that frequently comes up among women fans online.
Originally from Liverpool, England, Pimblett is an outspoken socialist who is married to his longtime girlfriend, with whom he has twin daughters. His close friendship with recently retired UFC fighter Molly “Meatball” McCann, an out lesbian, is perhaps even more widely known and wildly celebrated than his fight record. (Pimblett is not appearing on the White House card.)
Verret is one of Pimblett’s many fans — largely because of his public work as an advocate for men’s mental health and well-being.
“He’s always saying that other men, they’ve got to talk to somebody — it doesn’t mean that you’re weak as a man. It just means that you’re taking care of your mind and yourself — and I love that. When this platform is being used to shift a perception attached to something that might be otherwise seen as kind of animalistic or archaic, I love that.”
Many of Verret’s other favorite UFC fighters are women — Julianna Peña, Amanda Nunes, Rose Namajunas. She admires their strength, their discipline, and the way they also challenge stereotypes about women’s bodies and beauty.
Verret has also found community via UFC fandom. She recently reconnected with an old roommate — and found a meaningful friendship over their shared love of the sport.
She wishes more people understood the way that the sport is a way for women to find community.
“You’re usually not watching UFC by yourself,” Verret said.
