President Donald Trump sat down with Dana White to talk about UFC 334 and skipped the one thing everybody wanted from him, which was picks.
In a social media clip posted to X on Tuesday by Championship Rounds, White laid out the top of Saturday’s card for him. “The main event is Hokit vs Gane, and the co-main event is Amanda Nunes vs Kayla Harrison,” White said.
Trump told White “I know them all,” then backed away from naming winners because, as he put it, he’d “get myself in trouble around here.” He settled on a safe forecast. “They’re going to be two great fights, and there’s nobody like Dana White. I’m going to watch,” Trump said.
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So the most powerful man in the country gave a prediction with all the risk of a weather report that says it’ll be cold in January.
The card earned the attention. UFC 334 goes down Saturday, November 14, at Madison Square Garden in New York City, and it carries two first title defenses. Ciryl Gane defends the UFC heavyweight championship for the first time against Josh Hokit in the main event. Heavy’s writeup pitched it as a slugfest between two big men who have no issue standing in the pocket and trading. In the co-main, women’s bantamweight champion Kayla Harrison makes her first defense against Amanda Nunes, the fighter a lot of people already call the greatest woman to ever do this.
The story first ran on Heavy and was picked up by Yahoo Sports.
Darren Till did not buy the official version of the conversation. The former welterweight title challenger posted on X that he could “guarantee the conversation never went this way,” then offered his own transcript. In Till’s telling, White named the main event, Trump asked a question, and White’s answer was “who gives a shit.” Till signed off with “That’s exactly how the conversation went.” He offered no evidence, and he wasn’t trying to.
The White and Trump friendship has become its own beat. New York Magazine ran a piece on the clip under the headline “Trump Still Yearns for Press Secretary Dana White,” which tells you how far outside the fight bubble this thing traveled.
There’s also the calendar. UFC 334 is one of the last four cards of 2026, with UFC Qatar, UFC Saudi Arabia and UFC 335 still to come. After UFC 335, the promotion goes dark for more than a month until UFC Dallas in mid-January, so whatever happens at the Garden on Saturday will hang around the conversation for a while.
My take: I’ll give Trump credit for one thing. He’s right that these are two great fights, and a heavyweight title fight at MSG between two guys built to stand and swing is my kind of Saturday night. But a man who says he knows every fighter on the card and still won’t name a winner is the least straight answer of fight week so far. Gane and Hokit will settle it for him Saturday, November 14, at Madison Square Garden.
