"Gave a little bro hug."

We did it, Joe. We have a video.

To recap, on Saturday, The New York Times published a story on Meta-formerly-Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's recently-adopted and well-recorded Swole Guy endeavors, which have included but have not been limited to Zuck posting jacked, equipment-heavy Instagram selfies, renting out UFC arenas, and competing in a Bay Area jiu-jitsu tournament in early May.

As reports noted at the time, Zuck actually did quite well at that jiu-jitsu tournament, earning two gold and one silver medal on the day. But according to this weekend's NYT report, Zuck's silver medal match ended pretty roughly on the Facebook founder's side, with Zuck apparently getting choked out to the point of unconsciousness by his opponent. Not fun, but it happens in hand-to-hand combat sports.

That particular anecdote, however, seemed to irritate the extracurricular-happy Facebook founder, who — along with his jiu-jitsu coach and the might of Meta's comms department — pushed back. They're saying the ref was mistaken, and Zuck never passed out — his "effortful grunting," as the billionaire's coach put it to NYT writer Joe Bernstein, was simply mistaken as a snore.

This pushback, however, was still very he-said, Zuck-said. Referees do make wrong calls, and after all, there was no video — until now.

A video of the controversial match in question was shared with NPR by the spouse of the match's winner and alleged Zuck-choker-outer, Jeff Ibrahim, who also gave NPR a detailed run-down of his experience battling the Zuck in a local high school gym.

First and foremost, it's important to note that neither Zuck nor Meta has disputed the claim that the founder lost the match — they've only pushed back against the claim that Zucko passed out.

"Basically, he pulled me and when I got on top of him, his legs were wrapped around me," Ibrahim told NPR of the controversial match in question. "He's pulling the sleeve of my uniform, to the point where my uniform almost comes off, because I'm trying to get out of his guard. His technique was decent. I was able to actually get out of his guard, or as we call it, passing the guard. I was able to get out of it, and then switch positions. But then he ended up kind of pulling me back into his guard, but it wasn't tight enough."

Alright, so, Ibrahim "passed the guard," which according to one MMA blog means "establishing a more dominant position," which can be seen pretty clearly in Ibrahim's spouse's video of the event. And while Ibrahim says he's not sure whether Zuck ever actually passed out, he did say that the founder's grip on him started to get noticeably weaker as the battle wore on.

"I wasn't going to let go of it until one, he tapped out, or two, the referees stopped me," the fighter continued. "And I felt that he never tapped out. I couldn't tell if he was making any noises or anything... I was just in the zone."

"I mean, he was trying to get out of it," Ibrahim added, "but like the grip that he had on me, it just kept getting looser and looser."

Then, as the video shows, the ref stepped in, tapping Ibrahim on the back. Ibrahim rose in what looked like confusion — like he said, he was "in the zone" — and then, a split second later, so did an also-confused-looking Zuck, who can be seen having a back-and-forth with the ref. He doesn't make a scene, but he's visibly aggravated.

"Mark was confused originally, then that's when the referee explained it to him," Ibrahim explained to NPR. "And then he just shook his head and like, 'OK, I got it. I understand.'"

And though Zuck was certainly perturbed by the ref, Ibrahim says that Facebook's Eye of Sauron was nothing short of a good sport to his opponent.

"We shook hands," Ibrahim told NPR. "Gave a little bro hug."

Alas, we may never know whether Zuck was choked to the point of unconsciousness as a grown man in a high school gym. But at the end of the day, says Ibrahim, the guy went out there and did the damn thing. That's not easy for anyone, let alone a controversial billionaire who's oft been accused of undermining democracy. Gotta give him that.

"I mean, whatever politics people have regarding Zuckerberg, he came across to me like, he was a cool dude," the jiu-jitsu hobbyist added. "I just looked at him like he was just another person who wanted to compete in jiu-jitsu. And the one thing that people don't understand, the hardest part is stepping on a mat to compete in front of hundreds or thousands of people."

"And, you know, I have to give him his props," Ibrahim continued. "He did that."

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