You have heard it all throughout the 2020 election campaign from conservative voices in the MMA space: Socialism is bad. The government is a nanny state. Real men are self-taught. They pull each other by their boots and get to work and would never think of taking a handout.

The UFC, and by extension the sport of MMA, has become deeply connected with this message and perhaps the most active supporters of President Donald Trump’s failed re-election campaign in the American sports landscape.

UFC President Dana White, whose relationship with Trump dates back to well before Trump’s political career, spoke at the Republican National Convention, as he did in 2016. White also led a UFC contingent to attend Trump campaign rallies in the swing state of Nevada, and several UFC fighters have also appeared. with Trump at rallies in Florida.

MMA’s MAGA Brigade were undefeated champions in the fight against the gluttonous pig that is the evil government.

Until it was their turn to feed from the federal trough, that is to say.

In response to the terrible economic disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the government has created two lanes to help small business owners through the CARES Act, which was enacted on March 27.

One, the Economic Disaster Loan Program, is a low-interest loan program for which the lender has 30 years to repay. The second, the Paycheque Protection Program, is helping employers cope with payrolls during the pandemic. If certain criteria are met, these loans do not have to be repaid.

It turns out that several prominent names in the MMA MAGA sphere had already taken their handouts from the government as they spoke out against the evils of socialism. In a report released on Friday, Bloody Elbow dived deep in the public archives and found the following:

• Tito Ortiz, current mayor of Huntington Beach pro tem, a longtime Trump supporter and staunch defender of the anti-mask, took out a PPP loan of $ 32,292 on June 8. The loan is in the name of Ortiz and “Triple JJJ LLC”. (Does this mean that the company is called JJJJJJJJJ?)

• Miletich Fighting Systems, founded by MMA legend and libertarian outspoken Pat Miletich, took out a PPP loan of $ 8,700 on May 1.

• Brendan Schaub, admittedly, was not part of the team that campaigned for Trump. He used his platform, however, to make the case that COVID was exaggerated at the start of the pandemic, until he caught the virus after doing a stand-up comedy gig. It turns out that during the time that Schaub was telling his podcast listeners that COVID wasn’t serious, Brendan Schaub MMA found it real enough to take out a $ 22,427 PPP loan on April 29.

• Then there is First Round Management, one of the biggest agencies in the sport. Among his clientele is Jorge Masvidal, who has actively campaigned for Trump. To this day, he’s tweeting nonsense about a stolen election, which we will not relate to. FRM has gone federally more often than anyone else on the list. He received a PPP loan of $ 4,620 on April 8, an EIDL of $ 10,000 on April 18 and an EIDL of $ 140,000 on June 30. FRM President Malki Kawa took out an EIDL loan of $ 39,300 on August 4.

The story continues

There were also a few other big names on the list, but we’re not going to name them, because, you know what? They haven’t spent most of the past year telling us how they did it all on their own and how government money is going for the weak-minded snowflakes. The same goes for the lesser-known names, by and large, of gym owners and promoters of smaller-scale fights who have been hit hard by state and local shutdowns to fight the virus.

Americans faced unprecedented hardship in 2020 during the worst public health crisis of the last century. The role of the federal government is to help people get through such situations, a belief system emphasized by President-elect Joe Biden who beat Trump by more than 7 million ballots in the popular vote. Even those who consider themselves the tallest and strongest sometimes need a helping hand. Hopefully those who preached one thing but practiced another in 2020 will show a little more humility in the future.

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