You don't get a nickname like "The Sledgehammer" by being shy.
UFC heavyweight Ilir Latifi, who goes by that handle, was not at all reticent on the subject of money after his victory over Aleksei Ole on Oct. 1.
"I know Mark from Facebook is here," Latifi said in a post-fight interview. "You can throw in a bonus, too, Help us out."
Mark from Facebook--also known as Meta Platforms (META) CEO Mark Zuckerberg -- was indeed there at UFC Vegas 61.
In fact, Zuckerberg and his people were about the only ones in attendance at the UFC Apex, which was closed to fans and the media.
While there's no word on whether or not Sledgehammer got some Zuck bucks, the rather unusual seating arrangement sparked all sorts of speculation about a possible deal between Facebook's parent company and the world's largest mixed martial arts organization.
Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Zuckerberg is an MMA enthusiast, as evidence by a recent video of the billionaire trading with Khai "The Shadow" Wu, a 27-year-old MMA fighter. But no one thinks that Zuckerberg is planning a second career in combat sports.
Patrick Auger, speaking on his Fight Business, podcast, said "it's most likely something around hosting fights in the metaverse."
Zuckerberg could certainly use something in the win column following his rather dismal year.
Meta share's have tumbled and Zuckerberg's personal wealth had dropped, falling from $125 billion in January to $50,9 billion at last check, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
And Reality Labs the division that houses Meta's metaverse plans, recorded a second-quarter operating loss of $2.81 billion. In the first half, losses amounted to $5.8 billion. Reality Labs had a loss of $10.2 billion in 2021.
'It'll Be a Real Fight.'
The UFC on the other hand, Auger noted, has had record year-over-year growth, helping to boost the stock of parent company Endeavor Group Holdings (EDR), which beat second-quarter earnings and revenue estimates in August.
"Imagine you're the UFC and you are the first sport to really host regular metaverse events," Auger said, "and imagine your sponsors can buy not only physical sponsorships on your fighters' gear in your uniforms but can buy spaces in the metaverse arena to advertise to people who want to watch."
Facebook he said is in "a position where right now they need a win and they're more likely to give you favorable deal terms because I would bet money that Facebook is going to end up paying the UFC to do this if this is the metaverse introduction."
(Ari Emanuel, Endeavor's CEO, by the way, reportedly attempted to pave the way for a potential settlement between Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk and Twitter (TWTR) over their disputed $44 billion takeover, according to Bloomberg Law.)
UFC President Dana White has expressed interested in the metaverse.
"We’re looking to do a fight in the metaverse,” White said in an interview earlier this year in an interview on the Full Send Podcast. “We’ve been working on it for a while. It’ll be a live fight, an actual fight that takes place inside the metaverse,
“It’d be kids at home, you put on your (goggles) and you can (get) up and go walk around. We’re still working it out, but yeah, it’ll be soon," he added. "We’ll be doing a fight in the metaverse. It’ll be a real fight.”
'Deeply Passionate'
Justin Lacche, Commissioner of the Omniverse Sports League, which features four minor league sports teams competing physically and in the metaverse, said physical sports are changing extremely fast to keep up with digital fan bases.
"Sports is clearly one of the great tangible metaphors for getting more communities into the metaverse because those communities are deeply passionate, active and invest heavily as fans with their disposal incomes," he said. "So Meta looking to partner with sports leagues and vice-versa is a natural path."
However, Lacche said that Web3 -- the name applied to a new kind of internet service that is built using decentralized blockchains -- and metaverse platforms is "completely opposite of the Facebook/Meta business model."
"Mark wants everyone on Earth centrally on Facebook and Meta," he said, "Web3, which is the umbrella over the metaverse, is completely decentralized, non-single-entity dominated and outside engineering censorship."
The deeper calculus, Lacche said, "is not how many sports leagues Meta partners with in their flavor of the metaverse, but what happens when the global decentralized web3 ecosystem flips the script and tells Mark Zuckerberg how it is."
"That will be a metaphysical moment for Mark to reflect on," he said.
