The Pentagon is assembling lists of uniformed U.S. service members to attend a UFC fight at the White House next month hosted by President Donald Trump, with guidance memos setting body standards, appearance rules, and even a preference for who gets to be seen on camera. The tickets are free, but the troops selected are told they will have to pay their own way, while commanders are instructed to hand them out only to “genuine UFC fans” and mostly to junior enlisted personnel and junior officers.
Who Gets Chosen, Who Gets Screened
The guidance reviewed by CNN says ticket recipients must meet the DOW waist-to-height ratio standard of less than 0.55, along with all service specific physical fitness test requirements. One defense official said the selection requirements for Trump’s made-for-TV UFC event send a very clear message to soldiers interested in attending: “No fattys.” Another defense official familiar with the approval process said senior Pentagon leaders have signaled their preference that DoD attendees “look good” on camera during the event. “Basically, no fat soldiers,” the person said.
The memos also direct commanders to focus on selecting junior enlisted and junior officers, and recommend that military leaders recruit attendees who live outside the nation’s capital. The result is a carefully managed audience, filtered not just by rank but by body type, geography, and how useful they might be for the spectacle.
The Apparatus Manages the Optics
The Pentagon has tightly orchestrated the optics of Trump’s appearances with U.S. troops, including at his previous visit to Ft. Bragg where soldiers were handpicked for the audience based on political leanings and physical appearance. The troops ultimately selected to be behind Trump and visible to the cameras were almost exclusively male. That earlier staging now sits beside the new UFC plans as another reminder that the military machine is not just about force, but about image control, loyalty sorting, and who gets to stand in the frame.
The switch in the body composition standards is part of an intense focus on physical fitness by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who described his vision for the military in a speech to senior uniformed leaders last year. Hegseth said in October during a speech at Marine Base Quantico, Virginia: “There will be no ‘fat troops’ or ‘fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon.’”
What the Tickets Cost the People Wearing the Uniform
The Pentagon guidance says the tickets are free, but service members will be required to pay their own way. That detail lands like a familiar little insult: the institution offers access to a high-profile event, then shifts the cost onto the people in uniform while senior leaders decide who is fit enough, photogenic enough, and politically useful enough to attend.
The Pentagon declined to comment on the guidance about the UFC event. But the memos themselves, along with the earlier Ft. Bragg staging, show a system that manages troops as props for presidential theater while keeping the selection process tightly controlled from above. The event next month at the White House is being built not as an open gathering, but as another curated display of hierarchy, discipline, and image management.
The Pentagon has tightly orchestrated the optics of Trump’s appearances with U.S. troops, and the new UFC ticket process extends that same logic: the people at the bottom are screened, sorted, and told to look the part, while the people at the top decide who gets in, who pays, and who gets to be seen.