Roger Stone, a longtime ally to President Donald Trump, officially challenged former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon to a bare-knuckle boxing match late Saturday, calling the MAGA influencer a “gutless piece of human garbage” and highlighted his past ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
"The folks at Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship have suggested a match between me and Epstein Associate Steve Bannon tentatively at the Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood, Florida. I am in and waiting on Stinky Steve,” Stone wrote in a social media post on X.
“I have been training for months now three days a week on the heavy bag. Unless Steve Bannon is a gutless piece of human garbage he'll accept the challenge. The first round won't last two minutes.”
Both Stone and Bannon were key fixtures in Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign – Stone as a political advisor and Bannon as campaign CEO – and both ended up serving prison sentences related to their connections with Trump. Both were also pardoned by Trump, and have gone on to have a hostile relationship with one another.
That hostility appeared to come to a head on Saturday with Stone’s challenge, where he pledged to donate his winnings from the fight to the White Coat Waste Project, a government watchdog group that works to expose taxpayer-funded animal abuse. In the event that Bannon won the fight, Stone already had a recommendation for where he should direct his winnings.
“In the unlikely event that Steve wins, he can pay back the Epstein estate for the millions they paid him to rehabilitate his Pedo buddy's image,” Stone wrote.
Bannon had long maintained a relationship with Epstein, more details of which were unveiled this past week as part of the 20,000 pages of documents that were released from Epstein’s estate. Messages from the documents – mostly emails – showed that Bannon had advised Epstein on how to rehabilitate his reputation in the wake of his conviction over child prostitution.
The recent release of Epstein files has also renewed interest in a lengthy interview Bannon had shot and teased of Epstein in 2019 prior to his death in prison, an interview that to date has yet to be released. A photo of Bannon was also prominently displayed in Epstein’s New York home, revealed for the first time in August by The New York Times.I have been training for months now three days a week on the heavy bag. Unless Steve Bannon is a gutless piece of human garbage he'll accept the challenge. The first round won't last two minutes. I will donate my winnings to the White Coat Lab project that fights animal abuse,In…
— Roger Stone (@RogerJStoneJr) November 16, 2025