It nearly didn’t happen. Stand-up comedian Shane Gillis came close to skipping what would become one of the most unusual sporting events in American history.
Speaking on the Legion Podcast, Gillis reflected on his decision to attend UFC 250, the card held on the South Lawn of the White House to celebrate President Trump’s birthday.
“I almost didn’t go, but they got me,” Gillis admitted.
The deciding factor was an unexpected promotional video showing motocross riders performing tricks on the White House grounds.
“They posted a video of them doing like dirt bikes, and I was like…,” Gillis said. “Can’t resist the dirt bikes, this is what did it for me. I have to go.”
Once he arrived, Gillis quickly found himself swept up in the spectacle. One moment that stood out was the atmosphere between matches, which felt unlike any traditional UFC event.
“The best was like in between matches, they’d start like, they’d blast like, Let the Bodies Hit the Floor,” Gillis said.
The military flyovers also made an impression. “It made me go, flyovers and dirt bikes,” Gillis noted.
Gillis’ account matches what Joe Rogan recently revealed on The Joe Rogan Experience. According to Rogan, he personally encouraged the comedian not to miss the event.
“Shane Gillis was thinking about not going,” Rogan recalled. “I’m like, ‘Bro, you got to go. It’s going to be epic. It’s going to be a once ever thing.'”
Rogan continued by emphasizing just how unique he believed the event would be.
“Not a once in a lifetime,” he said. “Once in anybody’s lifetime. It’s never happened before. It’s probably never going to happen again.”
For Rogan, the scale of the event made it unlike anything he had experienced during more than two decades in combat sports broadcasting.
With thousands of fans packed onto the White House lawn and an estimated 85,000 more gathered at the nearby Ellipse, Rogan called it “the wildest experience that I’ve ever had in my 20 whatever years of calling combat sports.”
