Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
OTTAWA — It might have been a sign of the times last weekend when a UFC event in Edmonton descended into an anti-Justin Trudeau rally, especially as the worlds of mixed martial arts and politics are colliding south of the border.
Chants of “f–k Trudeau” continued on-and-off all evening, carrying through to the main event between flyweights Brandon Moreno and Amir Albazi. It’s not the first time, either. Fighters were serenaded with the same chant when the UFC was in the more Liberal-friendly Toronto in January.
And Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre might have been pleasantly surprised by the ringing endorsement he received from Quebec-born bantamweight Charles Jourdain at the event.
Jourdain gave the Opposition leader a nod just seconds after winning his match, promising to win the promotion’s bantamweight title if his fellow Canadians elected Poilievre prime minister.
“Hey guys, I’ll make a deal with you, if we (all) vote for Pierre Poilievre, I’m going to bring the belt back onto his desk,” said Jourdain in a post-match interview, eliciting a roar of approval from the crowd.
As Tuesday’s U.S. presidential election showed, the world of mixed martial arts has rapidly become part and parcel of the Donald Trump-led conservative movement.
The president-elect himself signalled as much in the early hours of Wednesday morning, when he cut off his own victory speech to give Ultimate Fighting Championship president Dana White a chance to address his supporters at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in West Pam Beach, Fla.
Anthony Koch, a political communications expert and former Poilievre spokesman, said that his old boss would be smart to follow Trump’s example of meeting young men where they’re at.
“Campaigns, on both the left and right, have historically ignored twenty-something men based on the assumption that they won’t turn up to vote anyways,” said Koch. “We’ve now seen that this isn’t necessarily the case at all.”
Longtime UFC personality Joe Rogan, for example, has said that he likes what he’s been hearing from Poilievre, even if he’s not totally sure how to pronounce his surname.
“That Pierre Pol-ee-vere guy, however you say his name, that guy makes sense,” Rogan said in a January episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, one of the world’s most widely downloaded podcasts.
Rogan, who wasn’t at ringside for either of this year’s Canadian UFC dates, has said he won’t travel to Canada while Trudeau is still prime minister, citing Trudeau’s crackdown on the 2022 convoy protests as one reason.
Poilievre himself has a foot in this world as a longtime client of Ottawa area fitness guru and ex-kickboxing champion Tony Greco. He also created a minor stir in the summer of 2023 when he engaged in a light round of sparring with a young supporter in Hamilton, Ont.
Once upon a time it was Trudeau who dabbled in combat sports to much fanfare.
A fresh-faced Trudeau famously showed his mettle in 2012, when he scored an upset victory over Senator Patrick Brazeau at a charity boxing match in Ottawa. He seemingly looked to recapture this mojo over the summer when he stepped into the ring with Paris Olympics bronze medallist Wyatt Sanford for a friendly sparring session.
Recent polling now shows that Poilievre is well ahead of Trudeau with Canadians aged 18 to 29. He also leads the prime minister with both male and female voters, although the gap is narrower among women.
After the U.S. election campaign, Poilievre can now crib from a new template for how to appeal to young men who may not have been otherwise inclined to vote for anyone.
Trump and running mate J.D. Vance largely opted out of traditional television interviews in favour of long-form appearances on podcasts popular with young men, including several that regularly cover topics related to mixed martial arts. Trump’s late-October appearance on Rogan’s podcast racked up more than 45 million views on YouTube.
Rogan endorsed Trump in the campaign’s closing days after being unable to land an interview with Trump’s Democratic opponent Kamala Harris. Trump has also been a mainstay at UFC events, typically sitting next to White in the crowd’s VIP section.
The Trump campaign’s targeting of mixed martial arts and other male-dominated domains likely played a role in bringing scores of young male voters into Trump’s camp.
Exit polling indicates that men between the ages of 18 and 29 shifted almost 30 points rightward from where they were in the 2020 presidential election, choosing Trump over Harris by a two-point margin.
Men in the age group made up about seven per cent of voters, turning out at around the same rate as women between 18 and 29.
But, even if he’s keen to solidify his gains with young male voters, this doesn’t necessarily mean that Poilievre should rush to buy tickets the next time the UFC comes to Canada, cautions Koch.
“A packed UFC event is an unpredictable setting where plenty of things can go haywire,” said Koch. “Trump thrives in the chaos, but the vast majority of politicians don’t.”
National Post [email protected]
Get more deep-dive National Post political coverage and analysis in your inbox with the Political Hack newsletter, where Ottawa bureau chief Stuart Thomson and political analyst Tasha Kheiriddin get at what’s really going on behind the scenes on Parliament Hill every Wednesday and Friday, exclusively for subscribers. Sign up here.
Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here.
English