Mark Zuckerberg‘s recent business decisions have made people think that he is trying to cozy up to President-elect Donald Trump. The Meta CEO, of course, announced days ago that he will be changing Meta’s fact-checking process, making it a community notes like ‘X’. In addition, the tech titan has also put one of Trump’s best friends, UFC CEO Dana White on the board of Meta.

While many see this as further proof Zuckerberg is capitulating to Trump and conservative circles, where he has been incredibly unpopular, Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan the ‘real’ reasons he wanted the UFC CEO on board.

“Dana [White] is like this guy who, I mean, he basically took the sport from being… this pretty marginal thing… and now it’s like, I think it [UFC] and F1 are the two fastest growing sports in the world. It’s got hundreds of millions of people viewing it.”

“What Dana’s done with the UFC is like, one of the most legendary business stories and the brand is beloved,” the tech titan added on episode #2255 of the JRE podcast.

Indeed, when White and the Fertitta brothers took over the UFC in 2001, the promotion looked to be on its last legs. Banned in many major states like New York, then Senator and future Presidential candidate John McCain had called it ‘human c–k-fighting’ and many feared the entire sport of MMA may be banned. This era of the sport was infamously known as ‘The Dark Ages’.

But White used all of his hard-nosed business acumen and the lessons he had learned from boxing to rejuvenate the promotion. Today, the UFC is synonymous with MMA to the point that many (including Zuckerberg in this interview) use the words interchangeably. Today, the UFC is the most valuable combat sports promotion in the entire sport and is an integral part of mainstream American culture.

And Zuckerberg justifiably wants the man who made this happen on the board of Meta to advise him. But the services required of the UFC head honcho on Meta’s board may be even more complicated and complex than anything he did in the UFC.

What does Mark Zuckerberg ‘really’ want from Dana White on Meta board?

According to Mark Zuckerberg, perhaps the most important attribute that led to Dana White’s inclusion on Meta’s board was the UFC CEO’s no-nonsense style and ability to withstand pressure. “I think he’s just a world-class entrepreneur, and he’s just like got a strong backbone,” the Meta CEO told Rogan.

After all, Meta and its products- Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are globally popular and are immensely influential worldwide. But some governments, especially the more authoritarian kinds that do not protect free speech in America, are known to put pressure on Meta to censor or suppress content. And Zuckerberg is hoping that having Dana White on board with his ‘backbone’ would help the company better navigate the murk waters of these issues.

“And I think part of what the conversation that I had with him around joining our board was ‘okay, like, we have a lot of governments and folks around the world putting a lot of pressure on our company and like we need some like strong people who are going to help advise us on how to handle some of these situations,” Zuckerberg added. What do you think about Mark Zuckerberg’s reasons for having Dana White join the Meta board?