Mark Zuckerberg Denies Getting Choked Out in Jiu-Jitsu Fight

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Swolecial Network

Meta-formerly-Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in the midst of a swole rebrand, has denied getting choked out to the point of unconsciousness during a fight with Apple... er, sorry, not Apple, just some dude at a Bay Area jiu-jitsu tournament.

"On May 6, Mr. Zuckerberg competed in his first Brazilian jujitsu event, in Woodside, CA, where he defeated an Uber engineer and won two medals, and lost consciousness," reads a June 2 New York Times report from which the knock-out rumor first arose. "José Lucas Costa da Silva, a veteran Brazilian jujitsu fighter who refereed one of Mr. Zuckerberg’s matches, said that he halted the bout after he heard Mr. Zuckerberg start to snore, a sign of someone who has passed out in a chokehold."

"This is something we are trained to know," Costa da Silva told the NYT, reportedly adding that Zuckerberg was a good sport and "enjoying the moment" regardless.

Grunt Cake

But that KO claim has proven to be controversial. After the story was published, Zucko, his jiu-jitsu coach, and the multi-billion dollar Silicon Valley behemoth that is Meta all went on the defensive, claiming that the meat-smoking Metalord never passed out — he was just grunting, thank you very much!

"After publishing our story, I heard from both Mark Zuckerberg and his Brazilian jujitsu coach," reporter Joe Bernstein, who wrote the NYT article, tweeted on Saturday, a day after the initial report ran. "They both insisted that Mr. Zuckerberg had *not* lost consciousness, and the coach said that the referee had mistaken his effortful grunting for snores."

"At no point during the competition was Mark knocked unconscious," Meta spokesperson Elana Widmann separately told The Daily Beast as rumors of the KO began to circulate. "That never happened."

Do you know anything about this incident, or Mark Zuckerberg's martial arts career more generally? Shoot us an email: tips@futurism.com. We can keep you anonymous.

Distract and Run

As we simply must note: this was a particularly inopportune week for Zucko to have to refute this specific claim, given that Apple finally just unveiled its new, buzzy, and highly anticipated foray into the world of VR — a space into which Zuckerberg has poured eye-watering amounts of both time and money, with little commercial luck.

Apple's new — $3,500! — VR goggles will be directly competing with Meta's Quest headsets, and with his company locked in a very visible battle with another giant... well, again, just really bad timing on the jiu-jitsu rumor.

But, hey, if you hear through the grapevine that Zuckerberg's nervous about Apple, pay it no mind. It was probably just some effortful grunting.

More on Zuckerberg's hobbies: Watch Mark Zuckerberg Slam Opponent in Hand to Hand Combat