Drain the Slop

It’s 8:15 p.m. on Friday, June 12th, and we’re at the base of the Lincoln Memorial, a few hundred of us, for the UFC Freedom 250 press conference, the curtain raiser for the president’s birthday weekend, whose culminating fight the mini jumbotrons on either side of us tease as “The Most Historic Sporting Event of All Time.” The crowd is pretty well mixed—mostly groups of young guys along with the families and couples, but the races and ages are all covered. The mood is mellow; the UFC shirts are many; the MAGA hats, so far, are numbered at only one. Above us, lining the rim of the memorial, dozens of National Guard troops have yet to disperse, the start time having been pushed over concerns about the heat lightning making intermittent dashes out of the clouds.