Current FBI director Kash Patel brought up the topic of the UFC training FBI agents over a meal with UFC president and CEO Dana White ahead of Patel suggesting to field office chiefs this week that the mixed martial arts league work with agents.
“I had dinner with Kash a couple of weeks ago, before he was actually confirmed and, yeah, he wants to train FBI guys,” White said on a phone call. “There’s no deal in place. It was just a conversation.”
Patel suggested UFC training on a phone call Wednesday with 55 field office leaders, according to a report by ABC News.
FBI trainees and agents have physical fitness requirements they need to meet, based in part on role, age and gender, according to the FBI website. Trainees need to accumulate a minimum score over at least four events taken in quick succession: a 300-meter dash and 1.5-mile run as well as situps done in one minute and number of pushups untimed. Special agents also need to undergo annual physical fitness testing which appears to involve the same four events, according to a physical fitness policy directive declassified by the agency in 2016. The scoring system for agents is based on how their performance places them among their age and gender peers. For instance, a male agent up to age 29 will score in the top percentile for running the 1.5-mile event in 8:22, while a 50-year-old agent will be in the top 1% with a 9:31 time, according to the document. Similarly, a 29-year-old female agent would be a top scorer with 53 pushups, while a 59-year-old would need 18 to be a top performer. There are some exceptions for being in a remote global location and for some non-physical roles to being subject to the annual fitness certification.
A partnership with UFC isn’t unrealistic: Special agents are allotted three one-hour exercise sessions a week, which they must take during their shift, or one hour before or after, and they have the option to couple the exercise time with their lunch hour, according to the declassified policy. The UFC Gym has three locations in the Washington, DC, region and will have a presence in 42 countries by the end of 2025, according to its website. The organization also offers personalized coaching as well as classes in high intensity interval training, kickboxing, boxing and Brazilian jiu-jitsu conditioning.
White has close ties to members of the Trump administration, including Patel, who served in Trump’s first administration and lives in Las Vegas, where UFC is based. Both White and Patel are close with the president. Patel served in the first Trump administration after being a congressman; Trump was an early supporter of UFC, allowing the league to hold fights at his Atlantic City casino in 2001 when MMA was still largely an unapproved sport.
UFC is owned by TKO (NYSE: TKO), which also includes WWE, PBR and a handful of other assets previously owned by Endeavor.
