Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was reportedly choked unconscious during a jiu-jitsu tournament last month.
The Meta CEO has garnered the attention of the combat sports community after video footage of him training in BJJ began making the rounds. Ready for the next step, ‘The Zuck’ reportedly entered a tournament last month and even walked out with a gold and silver medal, but not before experiencing some early adversity.
According to veteran BJJ practitioner and event referee Jose Lucas Costa da Silva, Zuckerberg lost consciousness and was snoring during an early matchup, forcing him to step in and stop the contest. Video of the aftermath hit social media and made it appear as though Zuckerberg was disputing the defeat. According to Costa, there was no argument between the two.
“There was no argument,” Costa told Bloody Elbow. “It was in Gi and he got choked out. That was the video you saw. I stopped it and he wanted to check with me about why I stopped it. He didn’t know what was happening, which was one of the reasons I stopped it. But he had started to snore and the rule set says that snoring is a version of a verbal tap.”
Mark Zuckerberg Disputes Report That He Was Choked Out at BJJ Tournament
If Mark Zuckerberg truly lost consciousness, his confusion and questioning of the stoppage are understandable, but Costa once again reiterated that there was no argument from the tech billionaire. He was simply trying to comprehend the rules with it being his first tournament.
“I was paying a lot of attention,” Costa laughed. “I was paying even more attention because it was Mark. He got caught in an Ezekiel and I waited, but he didn’t fight back. And I was waiting, but on the third snore, I had to stop the fight. He was very polite but he wanted to know how the rules work.”
Initially, Costa revealed that Zuckerberg had been slept in an interview with the New York Times. Getting wind of the report, the social media guru reached out to the publication alongside his BJJ coach to deny that he had been choked out during the event, suggesting that his snores were actually “effortful grunting.”
“After publishing our story, I heard from both Mark Zuckerberg and his Brazilian jujitsu coach,” NYT writer Joseph Bernstein tweeted. “They both insisted that Mr. Zuckerberg had *not* lost consciousness, and the coach said that the referee had mistaken his effortful grunting for snores.”