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It’s no secret Dana White has a pretty cozy relationship with Donald Trump, but the UFC founder isn’t involved with the current administration in any governmental capacity. However, that could change now that the newest director of the FBI has proposed a potential partnership to help whip its agents into shape.
Virtually every law enforcement agency requires its members to pass a physical fitness test in order to serve in the line of duty, and the FBI is certainly no exception.
The agency requires all of its members to pass the four-part Physical Fitness Test where they’re tasked with banging out as many sit-ups as they can in a minute, doing as many push-ups as possible until failure, and completing a 300-meter sprint and a 1.5-mile run while up against the clock (prospective members of its Tactical Recruitment Program also face a pull-up test that follows the push-up model; all participant receive a score based on their performance in each event and must meet an individual and cumulative threshold to pass).
Recruits who complete the rigorous 20-week training program at FBI Headquarters in Quantico also get a crash course in self-defense and hand-to-hand combat, and while the instructors tasked with instilling those disciplines presumably know a thing or two about them, it sounds like those lessons could end up being supplemented with some help from the UFC.
According to ABC News, recently appointed FBI Director Kash Patel held a teleconference on Wednesday with the FBI agents who oversee the organization’s 55 field offices and told them he wishes to cultivate a “formal relationship with the UFC” while suggesting Dana White’s MMA league could “develop programs for agents to improve their physical fitness.”
Patel credited new FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino for turning him on to the UFC training methods he’s incorporated into his own fitness routine, and while it seems like a potential partnership is in the early stages, people with knowledge of the virtual meeting said he informed them the two sides have already started a dialogue.
This seems like a fairly unnecessary move based on the resources the FBI already has at its disposal, but at the end of the day, it’s probably not going to hurt.