Art Davie, the 79-year-old founder of the UFC, has revealed details about his teenage years rooming with President Donald Trump at the New York Military Academy, describing the future commander-in-chief as “an egomaniac when he was 16” who constantly wanted recognition as “the GOAT in everything he did out there.”
The revelations came in an interview published on June 10, 2026, just days before Trump’s 80th birthday celebration, which will feature a UFC event on the White House South Lawn using the octagonal cage design Davie himself created decades ago.
From Brooklyn and Queens to Company E
Trump and Davie shared a small two-cadet room at the private boarding school in Cornwall, New York, beginning in September 1962. Trump, then 16 and in his third year at the academy, had arrived first and claimed the bottom bunk. Davie, a 15-year-old private from Brooklyn starting his first year, took the top bunk. Trump served as supply sergeant for Company E, and their quarters also housed M1 rifles without firing pins that cadets used for drills and ceremonies.
The future president was already displaying the personality traits that would define his public persona more than half a century later, according to Davie. “He was a great flag waver for himself,” Davie told the publication. “He wanted everyone to recognize he was the GOAT in everything he did out there.”
A Dispute Over Soccer and Baseball
Though the term “Greatest of All Time” had not yet become popular slang, the concept sparked tension between the roommates. Davie recalled a specific argument when Trump claimed he was the best soccer player on campus, despite two fellow cadets from South America actually holding that distinction. Trump was, however, among the school’s top baseball players.
“I remember Trump and I getting in an argument about the fact that he’s the GOAT when it came to soccer,” Davie said. “I said, ‘No, in baseball, you could say you’re the GOAT.'”
Trump then shifted to another grievance: his belief that he deserved promotion to captain rather than his assignment as supply sergeant. Davie also recalled that Trump admired President John F. Kennedy, particularly how the media elevated Kennedy’s star quality without Kennedy needing to boast about himself.
The Inspection Day Blowup
The roommates maintained what Davie characterized as a good relationship until an inspection by U.S. Army officers — a lieutenant colonel and a lieutenant. While Trump treated the visit with rigid formality, Davie chatted casually with the lieutenant colonel and joked that the M1 rifles in their room were “only pop guns” without their firing pins. A successful inspection meant each cadet could wear a small silver star on the right sleeve.
The exchange infuriated Trump, who accused Davie of speaking to the officers as if they were on Brooklyn streets. It marked the only serious disagreement between the two. After the Christmas holiday, the pair found themselves reassigned to separate rooms. Davie moved to Section 9 behind the main barracks, where he said cadets received single-bedroom quarters. He has long suspected Trump played a role in the reassignment.
Vietnam, Bone Spurs and a Nickname
Davie left the academy after completing the year and finished high school in Manhattan. He later joined the Marine Corps and spent 11 months and nine days in Vietnam, returning home as an actual sergeant before enrolling at St. John’s University.
Trump remained at the military academy and achieved the rank of captain by his 1964 graduation. He subsequently obtained five draft deferments. The final deferment was a permanent medical exemption based on a bone spur diagnosis from a Queens podiatrist who leased office space in a building owned by Fred Trump. In 2018, the podiatrist’s daughters stated their late father had issued the diagnosis as a favor to the elder Trump. The circumstances led academy alumni to give Trump the nickname “Cadet Bonespurs.”
The Circle Closes on the South Lawn
Davie created and co-produced the UFC in 1993, designing the now-famous octagonal chain-link cage. That identical cage design will be erected on the White House South Lawn for a UFC event on Trump’s milestone birthday, surrounded by a red, white and blue stage beneath a towering star-and-stripe arch with two large screens. Trump has described the finished setup as featuring a 5,000-seat arena right outside the front door of the White House, with up to 85,000 free tickets available for the South Lawn and the nearby Ellipse, where additional large screens will broadcast the fights.
The birthday spectacle coincides with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The Public Integrity Project has filed a lawsuit on behalf of two Virginia residents seeking to stop the event, though preparations have moved forward. For Davie, the improbable journey from a bottom bunk and a top bunk in 1962 to watching his former roommate host a UFC event on the most prestigious lawn in the nation represents the latest chapter in a relationship that began with an argument about who was the GOAT.
