"Going to bring our sport higher"- Anthony Smith explains why Mark Zuckerberg's presence will "only do good things" for the sport of MMA

The sport of MMA has seen a host of ambassadors from across all fields of life over the course of history. Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg is the latest name on the illustrious list of influential people gripped by mixed martial arts.

Zuckerberg was in attendance at the audience-less UFC Fight Night: Dern vs. Yan this past weekend at the invitation of Dana White. The Meta head seemed to thoroughly enjoy his time ringside and grabbed eyeballs on social media as the MMA fraternity discussed his arrival in the sport's coverage.

Anthony Smith weighed in on Zuckerberg and listed his observations on the Believe You Me podcast.

"The couple videos and clips of him kind of watching the fights, it's like he just discovered something. Like he's seeing something that just is amazing to him. Look how focused he is. He is just so in-tune. I watched him watch it, like he's learning something."

He then noted the Meta CEO's interest in MMA as a positive:

"Think what you want about Zuckerberg, I know that politically, there is a lot of argument there. A lot of people don't like him, they don't like his business, they don't like the transparency. I don't give a sh*t about any of that stuff. Someone as rich and powerful and with as big of a voice as he has, kind of putting his co-sign on what we do, is only going to bring our sport higher. And people with that kind of influence can only do good things for our sport."

Catch Anthony Smith's full comments below:

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Dana White talks about bringing MMA to the metaverse

One of the many explanations behind Mark Zuckerberg's Fight Night appearance and the empty Apex arena was a possible metaverse collaboration with the UFC.

Dana White hinted at such a possibility in an interview on the Full Send Podcast. He said:

"We’re looking to do a fight in the metaverse. We’ve been working on it for a while, be it a live fight, an actual fight that takes place inside the metaverse. It’d be kids at home could, you know, you put on your f***ing goggles and you can f***ing get up and go walk around and you know. We’re still working it out, but yeah, it’ll be soon. We’ll be doing a fight in the metaverse."

The UFC president outlined the promotion's future plans and spoke about adopting a digital approach by venturing into the metaverse. It will certainly mean a lot to the efforts of promoting and furthering MMA and it only spells good news for the UFC commercially.

Watch the full interview below: