When the UFC staged its historic card on the White House lawn to mark America’s 250th anniversary, most of the conversation centered on who showed up. But during a recent appearance on Tim Kennedy’s Overdogs USA podcast, no-gi grappling champion Gordon Ryan shifted attention to two notable absences: Sean Strickland and Jon Jones.
The subject came up when Kennedy laid out his observation about the event.
“He is the only American UFC champion at the time for the White House 250th anniversary match on the White House lawn,” Kennedy said of Strickland, “and we don’t have an American champion there because he’s expressing his views in accordance with the First Amendment.”
Strickland had been publicly excluded from the card amid his increasingly outspoken anti-Israel stance, a position that apparently complicated his invitation. Ryan acknowledged there could have been factors beyond politics.
“There’s probably some inside thing. I know that he has some like cr*minal history, so maybe there was something, just a vetting issue.”
But his overall read on the situation was direct.
“Not having, in my opinion, not inviting Sean as the only American champion, and not having Jon Jones on the card, like the greatest American obviously of all time, were two big f*ckups,” Ryan said.
The omission of Jones added significant weight to the criticism. Widely regarded as the greatest mixed martial artist to ever compete, Jones is not only the sport’s most decorated American athlete but a figure whose presence at a nationally symbolic event would have been difficult to argue against. His exclusion from a card designed to celebrate American achievement left a gap that Ryan found hard to overlook.
Despite his critique, Ryan acknowledged that the quality of the matches themselves prevented the oversight from becoming the dominant story.
“Thankfully the main event was so sick that like no one cared, but that could have been a disaster.”
The main event Ryan referred to was Justin Gaethje‘s memorable performance, which included him reading the Declaration of Independence before walking to the cage, recovering from a difficult opening, and ultimately handing Ilia Topuria his first professional loss.
The drama of the finish, along with the theatrical buildup surrounding it, largely absorbed public attention and gave observers little reason to dwell on who was missing.
