Donald Trump congratulates Jorge Masvidal on UFC 244 win but picks wrong thread to retweet

Jorge Masvidal captured the “BMF” title at UFC 244 in the highest-profile fight of his career and was congratulated on social media by the highest-profile spectator at Madison Square Garden, the President
of the United States himself, Donald Trump.

Trump sat cageside as Masvidal threw down with Nate Diaz over three rounds in Saturday night’s main event and, even though fans were denied the spectacle of the fight continuing into the championship rounds by the doctor’s intervention, Masvidal’s performance was impressive enough to earn a tweet of congratulations from the Commander-In-Chief.

Unfortunately for Trump, it all went a little bit wrong when it transpired he had retweeted a columnist attacking both him and the sport of MMA.

Trump quote-tweeted a video post by Bloomberg opinion editor Tim O’Brien, whose tweet showed a video grab of Masvidal’s pre-fight media day scrum in which he described the President positively as “a bad mother (expletive).”

On the face of it, that would be all well and good. But a cursory glance at O’Brien’s tweet showed it was the first of a lengthy thread. And a read through the tweets that followed taught us a few things:

O’Brien is certainly not a fan of Trump.
O’Brien knows precious little about the sport of mixed martial arts.
Trump clearly doesn’t look at what he’s retweeting.

Over the course of his thread, O’Brien appeared to attempt to conflate a Trump photo op with UFC welterweight contender (and unashamed MAGA caricature) Colby Covington with the El Paso mass shootin, and suggested that it was “bonkers” that the President would attend an event that the late John McCain once called “human cockfighting”.

O’Brien probably has no idea that long after McCain’s “human cockfighting” comments, the late senator, who died in 2018, had praised the development of the sport since the no-holds-barred early days of the UFC, and even admitted that he would have “absolutely” tried the sport in its current form, had it been around during his younger days in the U.S. Naval Academy.

So, to review, we have a President who retweets threads that directly attack him and a columnist who tries to use MMA to attack the President, but in the process shows a gaping hole in his knowledge of the sport, while taking some pretty big liberties when attempting to link world-class MMA with murder.

I think you can call that a lose-lose.

While we’re at it, let’s spare a thought for Masvidal. The man didn’t even get an @ mention from the President for his Twitter handle.

And as MMA Junkie regulars already know, including @GamebredFighter in the tweet was, of course, super necessary.

The Blue Corner is MMA Junkie’s blog space. We don’t take it overly serious, and neither should you. If you come complaining to us that something you read here is not hard-hitting news, expect to have the previous sentence repeated in ALL CAPS.