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    Trump Attends U.F.C. Fight in New York

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    President-elect Donald J. Trump arrived at Madison Square Garden for an Ultimate Fighting Championship event, which for a brief moment resembled one of his campaign rallies.President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has made few public appearances since Election Day, returned on Saturday to Madison Square Garden, the site of an inflammatory campaign rally late last month, to face a warm welcome from tens of thousands of people at an Ultimate Fighting Championship event.Mr. Trump walked in to “American Bad Ass,” by Kid Rock, and was met with a chant of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”As the president-elect took his seat around 10 p.m. at the edge of the octagonal fighters’ cage, the arena for a few minutes could have been mistaken for one of his rallies. In an unusually political scene at a major sporting event, Mr. Trump was heralded on the Jumbotrons with a sleek video that began with Fox News calling the election for him and ended with the numbers 45 and 47 flashing red on a black screen.Joining Mr. Trump at the event were Elon Musk and the podcaster Joe Rogan, as well as several of the president-elect’s choices for high-ranking posts in his administration: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the would-be health secretary; Tulsi Gabbard, his pick for director of national intelligence; and Vivek Ramaswamy, who along with Mr. Musk has been tasked with leading the Department of Government Efficiency, intended to advise on cost-cutting. The group, which also included Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, looked incongruously formal in an arena filled with sweatshirts, U.F.C. gear and baseball caps.Also in Mr. Trump’s circle was Dana White, the U.F.C. chief executive and a longtime friend, who has become close enough to the political operation that Mr. Trump invited him onstage in West Palm Beach, Fla., after his victory speech on election night. Mr. White used the moment to thank a handful of bro-culture podcasters, including the enormously popular Mr. Rogan.Mr. Trump’s campaign aggressively courted young male voters, also a significant share of U.F.C.’s target audience, through podcast appearances, and the league’s cast of characters played a role in Mr. Trump’s campaign. Steven Cheung, Mr. Trump’s campaign spokesman and his pick for White House communications director, once worked in U.F.C.’s communications office.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Octagon Inside the Sphere: Bloody Fights and Soaring Films

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      To amplify the first live athletic competition at the Las Vegas landmark, the Ultimate Fighting Championship turned to Hollywood.After an animated vignette of conquistadors ransacking Indigenous Mexican temples played on the Sphere’s enormous video screen and the venue’s haptic seats shook violently, two mixed martial arts fighters approached each other on Mexican Independence Day weekend. As they battled in the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s caged octagon, birds soared across a backdrop of temple ruins.The Sphere — a futuristic orb-like structure with more than 700,000 square feet of programmable screens inside and out — has primarily hosted musicians, keynote speakers and filmmakers since opening its radiant gaze upon the Las Vegas Strip in July 2023.It was one of those concerts last year, part of U2’s nearly six-month residency, that amazed and inspired Dana White, the U.F.C.’s chief executive. For months he has grandiosely proclaimed that he would hold the first live athletic competition at the Sphere, which can typically seat about 17,000 people.The company invested $20 million into Saturday night’s spectacle, called Noche U.F.C., as White challenged his staff to mesh a brutal, polarizing blood sport with pageantry and flair by working with award-winning Hollywood creators.“We showed everybody tonight what’s possible,” White said after the fight, which he said broke U.F.C. records for ticket and merchandise sales. “You can do more than just concerts here and pull them off and make them great. So who’s next?”The U.F.C. filled more than 700,000 square feet of programmable screens with tributes on Mexican Independence Day weekend.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ronda Rousey Apologizes for Reposting Sandy Hook Conspiracy Video

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      The former U.F.C. star apologized after Reddit users asked her about the video she shared 11 years ago. She called it “the single most regrettable decision of my life.”The former mixed martial arts superstar and professional wrestler Ronda Rousey apologized on Friday for reposting a video in 2013 that spread conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting, calling it “the single most regrettable decision of my life.”Ms. Rousey, who was one of the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s biggest stars, explained in her apology that she “watched a Sandy Hook conspiracy video and reposted it on twitter.”Ms. Rousey said the news media never asked her about the post, which has since been deleted. She said she considered apologizing for it many times, including in her memoir, but worried that doing so might “lead more people down the black hole” of conspiracies.“I deserve to be hated, labeled, detested, resented and worse for it,” she said in her apology, adding, “I apologize that this came 11 years too late.”Ms. Rousey’s apology came days after she hosted a Q. and A. session on Reddit.A user asked her if she should apologize for “sharing a video that you called ‘must-watch’ and ‘interesting’ that had claimed the Sandy Hook School Massacre was part of a government conspiracy.” Other users also asked about her old post.On Dec. 14, 2012, a 20-year-old man armed with semiautomatic pistols and a semiautomatic rifle walked into the school in Newtown, Conn., and killed 26 people, 20 of them children.In the years since, false conspiracy theories about the event have proliferated on the internet.In 2018, relatives of Sandy Hook victims sued Alex Jones, a media personality who spread conspiracy theories about the shooting through his company Infowars, for defamation. They were awarded more than $1.4 billion in damages, though what the families might receive is unclear as further legal battles drag on.In a post dated Jan. 15, 2013, Ms. Rousey wrote, “asking questions and doing research is more patriotic than blindly accepting what you’re told,” apparently in response to backlash she received about the video she had shared, according to a 2013 article on Bleacher Report, a sports news website.A 2013 analysis in The Huffington Post said the video, which appears to have been removed from YouTube, made a variety of false claims, including that some of the people in the school were paid actors.A lawyer and agents representing Ms. Rousey did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Saturday.Her apology has been viewed more than seven million times, and has received more than 2,000 comments, many of which appear to be supportive.In 2018, Ms. Rousey became the first woman to be inducted into the U.F.C. Hall of Fame. She also won a bronze medal at the 2008 Olympics in middleweight judo and for years was one of the biggest stars for WWE. More

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      Donald Trump Said He Proposed a ‘Migrant League of Fighters’ to U.F.C. Chief Dana White

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      Former President Donald J. Trump said in an address to an evangelical group that he had suggested starting a sports league for migrants to fight one another.Appearing at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s conference in Washington on Saturday, Mr. Trump described migrants with the dehumanizing terms he often uses to refer to them, saying they were “tough,” “come from prisons” and are “nasty, mean.”Mr. Trump then said that he had suggested to Dana White, an ally of the former president’s who is the chief executive of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, “Why don’t you set up a migrant league of fighters?”He continued, referring to the U.F.C.: “And then you have the champion of your league — these are the greatest fighters in the world — fight the champion of the migrants? I think the migrant guy might win! That’s how tough they are.”Mr. Trump said that Mr. White “didn’t like the idea too much.” But, he added, “It’s not the worst idea I’ve ever had. These are tough people.”Mr. White, asked about Mr. Trump’s comment at a U.F.C. event on Saturday, confirmed that the former president had made the proposal, but said, “It was a joke, it was a joke. I saw everybody going crazy online. But yeah, he did say it.”The Biden campaign denounced Mr. Trump’s comments, attacking what it called “a rambling, confused tirade,” at what it said was intended to be “a conference for Christian values.”“Trump’s incoherent, unhinged tirade showed voters in his own words that he is a threat to our freedoms and is too dangerous to be let anywhere near the White House again,” Sarafina Chitika, a spokeswoman for the Biden campaign, said in a statement.Mr. Trump has made immigration a central part of his platform in the 2024 presidential election, as it was in his two previous campaigns. He has pledged to carry out sweeping raids and to use military funds to erect camps to hold undocumented detainees. He has also escalated his rhetoric against migrants, at times using language that invokes the racial hatred of Hitler by describing migrants as “poisoning the blood of our country.”“Fantasies about cage matches are a distraction from the very real plans Trump and his team are making to deport millions of people who have lived here for decades and the resulting inflation, joblessness and economic devastation,” said Doug G. Rivlin, a spokesman for America’s Voice, an immigrant-rights advocacy group that has been tracking the escalation of Republican rhetoric on the issue. “Republican politicians are going to find that hard to defend while campaigning this year.”Jazmine Ulloa More