‘That’s the f***ing place’: How Trump can be lured to NRL… and take UFC boss had to shut down

Dana White, only five days ago, was kicking back in a Saudi hotel suite while telling his great mate and leader of the free world Donald Trump why, um, he was wrong.

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And at the heart of the issue, Israel Adesanya.

That rangy, UFC superstar whose storied fight career had only hours earlier been flatlined, and potentially finished, by a brutal right hand, left uppercut from France’s Nassourdine Imavov.

A stoppage witnessed from so close by White, down there in his seat abutting the Octagon apron, Adesanya’s incredible struggle to even find his feet post thwack was unmistakeable.

But the US President apparently, wasn’t so convinced.

Which is why after White eventually finished with his round of post-fight commitments and glad handing, when he was out of the arena and readying to jump another jet, this time for Australia, he saw that unmistakeable contact light up his phone.

“That was an early stoppage,” Trump’s text read, referencing Adesanya.

Which is no small thing, right?

Especially for a UFC Fight Night event.

“Yeah, he’s watching,” White grins, chatting now with Fox Sports Australia in the bowels of Qudos Bank Arena, only a few days on from said text and a few minutes before Thursday’s UFC 312 press conference.

Which as you may have heard by now, would prove yet another crazy stop in this most hectic of fight weeks for the UFC boss and his crew.

And all of it too, thanks to one man: Sean Strickland.

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Indeed, sat nearby in this stadium backroom as we speak, Hunter Campbell taps away furiously on his phone.

“Had a bit on,” the UFC Chief Business Officer will tell you later of a schedule that, straight after Sunday’s fight, will see he and White flying home for the Super Bowl then, within a day of that, filming for The Ultimate Fighter.

And all of this too following a swirl that, starting with Adesanya’s Saudi headliner early last Sunday morning, then moved into Sydney by Monday – where White went straight for his now traditional pie at Sydney institution, Harry’s Café de Wheels.

“Yeah, straight to Harry’s,” he grins. “I’ve been eating like a f***ing maniac this trip.

“I really need to get things back in order once I’m home.”

Indeed, when it comes to order, the other big topic this week is White’s wonderfully unhinged UFC challenger, Strickland.

Aka, the walking, talking s***show.

Arriving into Sydney on the same day as White, this self-confessed piece of American white trash has been taking the big stick, or maybe it’s schtick, to plenty more than Dricus du Plessis – whose UFC crown he wants to win back Sunday.

Guns, Gaza, whatever, doesn’t matter, Strickland has given an opinion, educated or otherwise.

None of which surprises the UFC chief executive, who quietly concedes to having this week employed a minder to shadow the polarising puncher who even whacked a fan last time he headline here.

But what you really want to know about is Trump’s text, which arrived not so long after that Adesanya defeat.

“And first round of that fight, Izzy looked incredible,” White recounts, dressed down now in jeans, black tee and, of course, kicks from a sneaker collection he spends $100,000 on annually.

“But in the second, Izzy gets clipped.

“Then two hours later, I get a text saying ‘that was an early stoppage’ …”

But from up close, White saw it differently.

“So I texted back ‘No, Mr President it wasn’t’,” he recounts. “I told him how Izzy, after they stopped it, was having a hard time standing back up.

“I told him it was a good stoppage.”

All of which brings us, in a roundabout way, to rugby league and the NRL.

“Who are headed to Las Vegas, right?” White says when the sport is first raised to him.

Absolutely, they are.

With ARLC Chairman Peter V’landys not only taking his NRL season launch to Sin City for the second straight year in March, but with bold plans to somehow, someway, get Trump involved.

“We’d love to have the president there,” V’landys said recently of his Trumpster vision.

“It would be worth millions of dollars and provide us the real breakthrough we have been looking for – it would go a long way to putting league on the map.

“It’s not impossible.

“We know his schedule is hectic, but we also know plenty of people who have ties to him.

“It would be a real honour.”

Of course, one of those with “ties” to the US president is White, whose fight company worth $12 billion has also recently formed something of a working relationship with the NRL, which includes allowing those teams competing in Las Vegas to train out of his UFC Performance Institute.

When it comes to getting Trump to your sport, White is the undeniable king.

Just as the UFC boss knows more than a little about building a sports promotion Stateside – and from the ground up.

“So if I’m running rugby league, I’d send him a cool invitation,” he said of jagging Trump.

“Use anything they can to make it different, a ball, whatever … make it cool and invite him.

“Certainly taking the game to Las Vegas the way they have, that’s been a brilliant play.

“I think for rugby league, that town is the f***ing destination.

“It’s where you attract fans from not only all over America, but all over the world.”

Undeniably, White also knows something about that too given, in a few weeks, the UFC will also celebrate its 15th anniversary of hosting fights here on Australia soil – with UFC 110 kicking things off in Sydney way back in 2010.

Yet tell White how well his promotion has since “expanded” here in Oz, and you quickly join Trump on that list of people he’s corrected this past week.

“We haven’t expanded,” White says, “we’ve exploded.

“It’s f***ing blown up here.”

Just as quickly however, the now 55-year-old concedes he never saw this coming.

“When I first arrived here, you guys had Elvis Sinosic — that was it,” he grins, referencing that fella who, fighting out of Sydney, and going by the eternally wonderful King of Rock ‘n’ Rumble, went and challenged for Tito Ortiz’s world title in 2001.

“Now though, you’ve already had multiple champions, multiple top 10 contenders … I never really saw how big Australia would really be.”

So what chance footy can do the same Stateside?

As part of promoting rugby league’s season opener, members of the NRL digital team have this week been creating content with not only UFC fighters like du Plessis and rising Australian star Jack Della Maddalena, but greats like Michael Bisping, Daniel Cormier, even popular UFC commentator Jon Anik.

Certainly, if anyone knows how an outsider wins over US sports fans it has to be Bisping.

So as for what tip the Englishman, and retired UFC champ, would give V’landys about outsiders making fans in the US?

“Ah, that’s a tricky one,” he grins, “because initially Americans liked me, then hated me, and now fortunately appear to like me again for the most part.

“I think, really, if you want to be liked in anything you have to be authentic.

“You can’t pull the wool over the eyes of the public … eventually, people see through it.”

Anik, meanwhile, likes the idea of the NRL becoming a sport on which Americans gamble, and said his first move would be to have handicappers and betters pushing wagers on social media.

“Although there’s no doubting the American sports landscape is challenging,” he added. “The NFL is king and then there is everything else.”

Which is why V’landys will go so hard after Trump.

But to get him?

White is encouraging the footy boss to think up something big.

Something unique.

Hell, maybe he even tries arguing the finish of a UFC Fight Night.