Dana White loves and defends his homophobic UFC fighters. Now he’s helping guide Meta.

Much of President-elect Donald’s Trump’s crossover with sports lies in the realm of combat sports, most notably the Ultimate Fighting Championship, evidenced by his close relationship with UFC president Dana White.

That influence saw the company’s events increasingly morph into de facto Trump rallies, complete with the mutated definition of patriotism that has usurped conservatism in past decades and the reductive reclassification of “free speech” seen in certain online circles, most notably social media platforms run by major tech corporations.

Watching all of this unfold in the wake of an election cycle that saw some of the most blatant use of homophobia and transphobia by a national political campaign ever (despite its reported effectiveness), it didn’t shock the system to see Meta head Mark Zuckerberg announce the addition of White to the Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp parent company’s board of directors last week.

White hasn’t been shy about defending UFC fighters when they target the queer community, whether vocally defending Sean Strickland after his multiple homophobic, transphobic and misogynist rants or keeping silent after Conor McGregor and Bryce Mitchell made homophobic comments on social media.

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“I don’t f*cking tell any other human being what to say, what to think,” White said when asked about Strickland’s remarks. “And there’s no leashes on any of them…Free speech brother. People can say whatever they want and they can believe whatever they want.”

White even went so far as to say he was the victim for being the subject of criticism. “I equate it to being gay,” White said, according to Complex. “Think about this, back in the ’80s if you came out and said you were gay it could destroy your career. Imagine living a life where you can’t be who you really are, it’s got to be a horrible thing, right? F**k that, I am who I am, if you like it or you don’t like it, I don’t give a f**k. That’s your problem, not mine.”

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Given the lack of synergy between White and Zuckerberg’s occupational endeavors beyond building brands that exploit portions of their workforces and turning a blind eye to homophobia, adding the UFC leader falls in line with Zuckerberg and other tech leaders’ efforts to ingratiate themselves with an incoming Trump administration that continues to parrot unfounded ideas of focused conservative censorship on social media platforms such as Meta’s.

There are certainly perks for Zuckerberg having someone like White in his corner when it comes to cozying up to a regime with ideals rooted in discrimination and greed under the guise of promoting free speech and economic flourishment. It’s also a plus considering the budding friendship between the two after Zuckerberg took up MMA as part of his own weird tech CEO glow-up à la Jeff Bezos in recent years.

At the same time, plenty of criticisms remain unaddressed regarding the move, including naming a person who was captured on video striking his wife, hasn’t adequately addressed McGregor being held liable for sexual assault in an Irish court and holds close ties to authoritarian government leaders to such a position.

Some such criticisms were made by Meta employees on its internal communications platform Workplace in response to the news, though, according to 404 Media, several of those comments were deleted by the company for violating internal guidelines on employee communication. It places the folly of how White, Zuckerberg and fellow “free speech idealists” (including Elon Musk) promote the concept.

But Zuckerberg pretty much gave away another key truth around the decision during a recent appearance on UFC broadcaster Joe Rogan’s podcast.

“I think part of what the conversation that I had with him around joining our board was, ‘OK, we have a lot of governments and folks around the world putting a lot of pressure on our company, and we need some strong people who are going to basically help advise us on how to handle some of these situations,’” he said.

He wants a bully to shore up his company’s backbone against government regulation, and who better to fill that role than someone with a pattern of defending some of the most vitriolic and demeaning language toward queer, trans and other marginalized individuals to come out of the sports world in recent years.

The two are made for each other.

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