Why Mark Zuckerberg and the Tech Bros Are So Obsessed with Mixed Martial Arts

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out.

I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

This guy walks into the gym with a hat on and an N95 mask.

And I swear, I thought this guy was dying.

I thought this guy just wanted to do jiu-jitsu on his final days.

Right after this ad.

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All right, Cortez, I'm going to begin by jeopardizing all the goodwill we have built by bragging about something.

That we're a top three podcast, not just on Spotify, but on Apple Podcasts.

That is extraordinarily accurate, but no different brag.

I wanted to brag about a different number

because there are now approximately like 3 billion people on Facebook, right?

At Harvard,

I was Facebook member number 199.

Wait, wait, you went to Harvard?

I've never heard you mention what school you were.

You're going to get in the way of my story now, or because

there's a story here.

Aren't you in like Mark Zuckerberg?

Like boys from Harvard?

No, no, I am not.

I am not.

I know many assholes from Harvard.

I'm not friends with all of them.

You're friends with a lot of assholes from Harvard.

Like already.

The point is that I am not friends with Mark Zuckerberg.

Actually, the reason I say this is because I have known so many stories about Mark Zuckerberg for 15 years now, back when there were 200 people on Facebook, right?

That the fact that he has successfully rebranded himself, right?

As a sports story, as an athlete, as the $100 billion face of Brazilian jiu-jitsu now zuckerberg and jiu-jitsu is like you with your calves okay like is isn't zuck shirtless all the time now when i see him doing all this stuff it makes me want to vomit and i don't think people react that way to my calves we will also find out about that but the point is the point is i vomited when i see him no i i feel cortez a arousal is not the same as vomiting b it makes me feel crazy to see him shirtless on boats with mma fighters and this whole Elon Musk thing.

I mean, he wanted to fight Elon Musk, didn't he?

Like, that's been a thing for months now.

But here's the thing.

Elon Musk has also, in fact, been going on and on about how he's been training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

Like, tech bros as a whole are, for some reason, obsessed with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in specific, which is why I became obsessed.

Well, hold on, hold on.

What?

You know, I'm a betting guy.

Like, I was hitting the parlays this week, and it weren't people betting on Zuck and Elon.

Like,

Zuck was the big favorite because he's the alpha again he's an alpha but what i have become obsessed with watching this is why

why are all of these tech bros why is all up silicon valley apparently obsessed with one specific martial art

and in the process of trying to figure this out um

i arrived at the legend of the man who choked out Mark Zuckerberg.

Somebody choked out Zuck?

Well, so legally speaking, I should say that Zuckerberg denies that this ever happened, right?

But we sent a real live Pablo Torre finds out correspondent, Cortez.

Journalists.

To find out, because the guy who allegedly choked out Mark Zuckerberg agreed to talk to us.

Oh my God.

And so my friend Jay Caspian Kang, documentarian, author, one of the great writers in America at the New Yorker, he agreed, go out into the field and bring us back the truth.

To do the journalism that you wouldn't do, but to do us the favor of doing journalism for this show.

I'm excited.

Journalism.

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This smooth, flavorful cognac is crafted from the finest grapes and aged to perfection, giving you rich notes of oak and caramel with every sip.

Whether you're celebrating a big win or simply enjoying some cocktails with family and friends, Remy Martin 1738 is the perfect spirit to elevate any occasion.

So go ahead, treat yourself to a little luxury, and try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

Learn more at remymartin.com.

Remy Martin Cognac, Feeding Champagne, afforded to Alcoholic Volume, reported by Remy Control, USA Incorporated in York, New York, 1738, Centaur Design.

Please drink responsibly.

So, Jay, I want to explain why I asked you, why I assigned you this story.

And part of it's because

I regard you as both a cultural critic in a real way who sort of is unafraid of saying rude things about people who are very powerful.

Also, I know you as

truly a degenerate sports gambler who knows a lot about combat sports, who i've covered like fights with before in vegas so you know that world

but brazilian jiu-jitsu this is where i am embarrassed as an asian american um

i know so little about it i knew so little about it when i assigned this story to you and you graciously accepted the assignment.

So what is Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, BJJ?

What makes it distinct as a discipline from other martial arts?

You can start with some of the history of it, right?

Which is the Gracie family came into the beginning of the US Ultimate Fighting Championship and they started dominating and people couldn't really figure out why.

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is a form of self-defense martial arts derived from the original Jiu-Jitsu, which came from Japan and it was taken to Brazil by a Japanese master.

who taught a group of brothers.

The Gracie family is the most important family in the history of martial arts.

These brothers focused more on the ground aspect of Jiu-Jitsu.

Choke, submission holes.

It's a very strategic way to fight on the ground.

They're like, why are these little dudes from Brazil who...

They don't really look like they're that strong.

They don't move like some of the, I don't know, karate guys where it's like beautiful and fluid and they're doing these crazy kicks.

They're not strong like some of the wrestlers or they're not built like some of the other people who like would go in as brawlers or whatever and yet like nobody can deal with this.

Out of the red corner, Hoyce Gracie!

There goes Hoyce.

He looks like he's going for the back.

There's the tap.

There's the tap.

Hoyce actually having that choke from the back and he taped it.

And that is a good back choke.

One of the fundamental strategies of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu.

The Gracies, they started gyms all around,

like everywhere.

And then you have people learning this discipline and figuring out what it is.

And I think that one of the things that I was curious about from the beginning was just like, okay, well,

what is the actual cheat code here?

Right.

People have been wrestling forever.

Judo exists.

All sorts of grappling forms of martial arts exist.

Why was this one so dominant?

I think that it is something about the fluidity of it and then just the efficiency of it that you have almost an infinite amount of permutations within there that you can learn and get better.

And like, I don't know, like, I think for the people who are true believers in it, the practitioners of it, and then the people who buy into the gospel of it, that there is a,

it, it's not quite religious.

It just feels almost like data analytics within sports, right?

That, um, not in terms of the evidence-based or whatever, but just in terms of the belief that people have in it, where they say

nothing else is as good, everyone else is stupid.

If you're, if you're practicing taekwondo or if you're doing karate, that's just stupid.

It's a waste of time, right?

Now, they might say it in more polite terms, but that's sort of what they mean.

Right.

They've optimized, they've surveyed the data and they came to the most optimal conclusion.

Yeah, it is the corner three

of

the corner three

or it's the three-run home run.

That's right.

The three true outcomes.

Yeah.

Comes through

UFC of

martial arts.

And

do I think that that's true?

Yeah, I think it's probably true, right?

I do think it's the most efficient way in which a normal person can spend their time if they want to learn how to fight.

But I do think that a lot of the people who are into it these days have the same sort of optimization slash efficiency mindset when they go into it.

I talked to this guy, Dave Camarillo, who's a bit of a legendary trainer.

He works in San Jose, which obviously is right in the armpit of Silicon Valley.

And

he had some very interesting things to say.

The first, the first and most...

interesting part was that he just said yeah this is you know this is happening these this group of people are very into this now.

And this, because I, you know, you think that this is true, but you don't ever know if it's actually true, if like the actual numbers of people coming into a gym are actually going to reflect what you think is happening.

But yeah, he said that this was happening.

And secondly, he said that, you know, there was a way in which the on-ramp into enjoying and feeling satisfied through jiu-jitsu was less steep than other than other martial arts and really other sports.

I think jiu-jitsu, the reason why it's becoming intellectualized, if you will, you know, you're having

many people from different fields jump into it,

is because of how user-friendly it can be.

A lot of kids are doing jiu-jitsu.

A lot of big tech people are jumping into jiu-jitsu.

There's no art like it.

Well, look, you live in the Bay Area.

You're using words like permutations and efficiency to describe what is special as

the competitive advantage to BJJ.

And so let's be honest about this.

The reason why I wanted to do this story is obviously because the biggest big tech person who fell in love with BJJ is Mark Zuckerberg.

And I remember listening to Zuckerberg on Joe Rogan's podcast, Jay, in which he went on one of these monologues.

He sounded like a guy.

who was talking about how he just discovered his favorite drug, like after graduating college.

I trained with this guy Dave Camarillo.

I know yeah gorilla jiu-jitsu yeah so and he's awesome he's I mean he's great yeah super nice guy and

I feel like I'm learning a ton and I don't know I mean it's it really is the best sport I don't the question isn't how did I get into it it's how did I not know about it until just now from from from like from the

from

the very first session that I did

like five minutes in I was like where has this been my whole life?

And so when you talk to the BJJ people who he's worked with, how do they describe Zuckerberg?

They say he's a very hard worker, right?

They say that he cares about it a lot, that he's extremely serious about jiu-jitsu and, you know, mixed martial arts in general.

Mark, as a student, is one of the best students I've ever had.

He's extremely disciplined.

We never miss training.

It is non-negotiable that he's going to be training.

Outside of that, I think the best word to describe him with his training is appreciative.

Every day he's appreciative.

You know, he's learning every single day and that hard work pays off.

So

he's tough and he's serious.

He probably does take it extremely seriously.

I mean, this is a guy who spent...

who every year has some goal, right?

One of them was like, he wouldn't eat any meat that he didn't kill.

Do you remember that?

And then

he would take all these photos with sweet baby rays in the background.

We got it.

The sweet baby rays super cut.

We're about to play that right now.

Sweet baby rays barbecue sauce.

That is going on the ribs.

Sweet baby rays.

Sweet baby rays to a sweet baby rays.

Sweet baby rays is very good.

Sweet baby rays.

Sweet baby rays.

We have just applied the sweet baby rays.

Sweet baby rays.

A sweet baby rays.

Maybe throw some sweet baby rays on the ribs and take it from there.

Look, I don't know what it's like to have a billion, several billion dollars, but I would hope that if I had several billion dollars, that

I would try and challenge myself in ways in which

that would be intellectually and physically interesting to me.

Right.

And that seems to be what he's doing to a certain extent.

And so it doesn't surprise me that everyone said he's a very hard worker.

What I get from your description and your reporting on this is that there's an earnestness.

Like there's an earnestness to Mark Zuckerberg trying to do this thing that he became a fanboy of via the internet.

Right.

But I think it's true of everyone who does Brazilian jiu-jitsu, that at least that I've spoken to, that there is a

there is a buy-in that is unusual.

And I've just introduced a bunch of my friends to it, and that's been really fun because now it's like we train together and we just like wrestle together.

And just, I don't know, there's like a certain intensity to it that I

like.

And it's, it's sort of,

I don't know, maybe it's like there's there's this cultural thing where maybe a lot of people haven't considered it.

Right.

But I've had a hundred percent hit rate of introducing friends to it and converting them to people who now train.

Every single person who I've like who I've who I've kind of shown it to is like, this is amazing.

This is like obviously how I should be training and working out.

The extent to which people gush about it, you know, at least for a cynic would raise a lot of flags, right?

Like you would be like, well, like, this seems a little bit weird.

Why are you so earnest?

Yeah,

are you performing earnestness as opposed to actually being in it?

But this is, but this is why like the little tech people in this picture are interesting to me, the people that you talk to, because like I get the sense that, okay, Mark Zuckerberg is this MMA tech bro in a real way.

But the larger Venn diagram between BJJ and Silicon Valley beyond like the famous people, what does that Venn diagram look like as you now understand it?

Well, it appears that a lot of people are going into these gyms now, right?

That the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu gyms are all extremely crowded, that there are tons of people in them,

and that

a lot of them are tech workers.

I talked to this guy, Ricky, who lives in Berkeley.

He is telling me it's like a networking opportunity for some people because there are so many tech workers in there.

There are, at least at my gym, I'm in Berkeley, so I'm in essentially a college town.

it's not a bad place to network i have you know i've gotten connections

what type of networking do you're like grabbing each other

rolling around on the ground you're like hey listen literally no i mean almost literally that yeah you're like

it is almost literally that you could be rolling with someone at a lower intensity and you're like hey what do you do for work again and they're like oh i'm i'm an account executive at service now you're like oh really i'm i'm actually in sales i'm trying to like do like i actually have gotten introductions at work and I've shared, you know, tech, tech insider information or whatever you want to call it, SaaS metrics during jiu-jitsu classes.

Give me the visuals on Ricky.

What does Ricky look like?

How big is he?

What's his stature physically?

Ricky was about five foot.

He said he was 5'7 ⁇ , about 150, I think.

You know, he had sort of big hair.

Very energetic, bright-eyed guy.

I actually liked him quite a bit.

The profile, the scouting report on Ricky, 57150, is about Mark Zuckerberg's like, that's about suck height and weight.

And the idea that Ricky got into this because there is some aspect of being a small guy.

Right.

It's similar to why Steph Curry is very popular among kids or Kyrie is very popular among kids because

you see a smaller person doing the impossible and beating these gigantic NBA players and

competing with them and out-competing them.

And you think that you can do it.

So Ricky's 5'7 ⁇ , 150, right?

I'm not much taller than Ricky, but I am a few inches taller than Ricky, but I'm three-quarters.

I'm way bigger than Ricky, you know, in terms of size.

And if I saw Ricky, I would just be like, yeah, and I don't have these thoughts walking around, I promise you.

But, But you know, if I did, I'd be like, if I walked around the world calculating which people I came across, I could curb stomp.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would pick Ricky.

I only do that at journalism conferences, but if Ricky, uh,

Ricky would, would end me, I would have no chance against Ricky, right?

Um, like basically, anybody that you and I know in common would have no chance against Ricky.

And that's got to be, you, you have to feel like Superman, right?

Like you found the secret.

It's, that's how people discuss it.

That's how it's thought about.

It's a secret.

And that's what Mark Zuckerberg was saying, right?

In that interview with Rogan.

He's saying, oh, why did I not know about this?

Right.

They talk about it like it's this secret knowledge that they have accessed.

And now their small stature.

no longer matters, right?

It doesn't matter anymore.

Like in the most primal encounter that they can have, which is a physical fight with somebody, that the old things things that seemed to matter to them that used to affect their psychology in some sort of way are now erased.

Right.

And now actually they're going to kick your ass.

I've had direct reports who are a little bigger than me be like, I could definitely take you in a fight.

And I'm like, oh, if there was ever a situation, like if the scenario, I just, I fantasize, I probably once a week, this lives rent-free in my brain.

Once a week, I think about like, oh man, if Connor knew, because Connor was talking all that smack, like he could, like, he could do anything.

Like, I just know he couldn't.

But there, in what scenario would i ever throw down you know actually end up grappling one of my direct reports yeah our next interview is with connor we're like connor listen

that's his that's his real name too so if he listens to this shout out to connor who thinks i wouldn't arm bar him 10 times in five minutes I want to square the circle of like, okay, tech bros, tiny nerds by reputation, also people who are hyper-competitive, right?

Who have these big egos.

And you're describing the language of the dreaming of victory.

but then i want to get to the reality of what it's like to actually try to be good at this to like actually start training in this because what's the learning curve like like what's it like to actually try to do this in reality in the beginning

Yeah, I was confused.

You know, it's a bit of a conflicting message because everyone says it's very user-friendly, but then everyone also says you spend the first two years getting your ass kicked.

And I was like, that doesn't seem very user-friendly to me.

If someone was like, Oh, you know, like, this thing's really easy for two years, you're just going to get choked out all the time and have to roll on the ground with a bunch of sweaty people.

I'd be like, That sounds not user-friendly, you know.

Like, I would, I'll avoid karate, I just break some boards, I feel great about myself.

I'll just that seems more user-chops of wood,

yeah, exactly.

But in this one, like, I have to try really hard.

Um, people get in incredible shape because the exertion of wrestling and fighting and pulling and moving is so high.

And so I don't think it's that user-friendly, but it is explained that way.

But the way in which the one thing that is universal across the board, people say, is that it's the most humbling thing they've ever done.

That you like, I will say that if I put myself in and I saw Ricky and I was like, oh, Ricky's not a problem for me.

He's not a threat.

I've assessed the situation.

Ricky's not a threat.

And we were at a Brazilian jiu-jitsu class and he just within 20 seconds had me in a choke, right?

That would be humbling.

And I think that that's the experience for most people.

Yes.

That they try and make it so that you understand from the very beginning that there is something else going on here than athleticism, physical strength, and like being a tough guy, right?

That the technique and the knowledge is what you have to respect.

And that I think once people are kind of buy into that, then like they're like, okay, how do I get to the next level?

How do I get to the next level?

How do I get to the next level?

When you talk to the people who coach and train Zuckerberg, how explicit are they about the idea that, look, this is not just psychoanalysis.

Like, this is real.

Like, you get embarrassed.

And that's part of why this is good.

This is what Dave Camarillo told me.

I think it's really important to be embarrassed,

to be humiliated.

Not on a day-to-day basis, but I mean, that's,

I believe in spectrums.

So you're being embarrassed on one side, then you're having triumph and victory on the other.

If you don't have all of those levels and degrees in that spectrum, I think you're deficient in life.

Somebody could be a weightlifter or a soccer player or somebody who's really fit.

They come in here and maybe they're training with someone 30, 40 pounds lighter than them, and they're just getting totally wrapped up and there's nothing they can do.

And that is such a good shock to their system.

It's to me, it's extremely healthy part of their life.

I think everyone in in brazilian jiu-jitsu says that right like that it's good to feel that humiliation because you understand at some point you won't right but that it takes a lot of work to get there it's a good life lesson i think uh or they see it as a life lesson i mean ricky in his younger days we should say so not to embarrass him but this was like 10 years ago when he was in his early 20s he wrote like uh almost like a 10 rules of life you know like a jordan peterson type of treatise about brazilian jiu-jitsu

where did he write write it?

He posted on LinkedIn.

I love Ricky.

And so I don't want to say Nikki.

He is

just everything that I imagine Ricky to be.

Oh man, I was, I was very, I was, I was, I was a huge supporter because I was just like, look,

he's so earnest that it's hard to dislike anything he's doing.

But yeah, he made the most LinkedIn, LinkedIn post of all time, right?

Which was just like, how does Brazilian jiu-jitsu set you up for success?

You know, point one.

Respecting the hierarchy, embracing the grind, constantly evolving, understanding how to be an independent contributor and a team player.

And the whole thing was kind of like, you know,

you're on the grind, right?

Like, it was very much a Silicon Valley type of thing where,

you know, take your losses,

deal with adversity, that type of stuff.

And I don't know.

I think that there is a way in which you can really believe that that is quite powerful.

Wait, so what does someone like Ricky think of Mark Zuckerberg?

How much is he a topic of conversation in Ricky's network?

I think it's hard to be in Silicon Valley and practicing jiu-jitsu and not think about this because it was such a huge news story.

And that it is quite surprising in a lot of ways to see this guy who really only shows his face, like, you know, in weird Instagram videos where he's like, hey, guys, you know, or when his face is covered by like a pound of SBF 9 million.

Yeah, exactly.

Like, hey, guys, you know, we're connecting the world and I'm sorry, but 40% of you have been laid off, right?

Like,

he's

almost like a floating head at this point, right?

Just because there's a big Zorg Power Ranger's energy around when Mark Zuckerberg appears.

It's just like, okay, and there's been the giant disembodied head of the guy who actually rules.

our planet.

Exactly.

And so

like, you don't even really know what his body looks like.

And so he, he, uh,

I think that when that person starts showing up at gyms, right, and like competing, of course, it's going to be the talk of everything, right?

It's like almost like if, uh, oh, I don't know.

It's like if like Barack Obama showed up at open com at open mic night at like the comedy cellar in Greenwich

or something,

you know, he's like, oh,

it just starts, starts firing off jokes about

Joe Manchin.

He's like, well, let me tell you.

Did you guys hear Obama's tight five?

You got a real tight five on the West Virginia Senators.

Yeah,

I got a tight five on Kirsten Sunima.

And then I got another 10 on Nantucket.

You know, why Martha's Vineyard is better than Nantucket.

All right, let's go.

You know,

it's similar to that.

It's like seeing somebody who,

in a lot of ways, is almost a mythic figure show up.

And then he's like starting at the bottom, right?

And I, of course, it's, it's going to appeal to them.

Uh, Ricky told me that he would, it took a lot to get it out of him, but at first he was like, oh, I think we would do okay.

You know, he would keep, he would present challenges.

I was like, come on, Ricky.

And he was like, I would crush him.

Fine.

I'm calling you out, Zuck.

I'm calling you out Zuck.

I would, I would handle the Zuck.

No problem.

Okay, I'm going.

I had a director port of mine ask me once, he said, like a few months ago, Zuck competed and lost.

And he's like, hey, so I saw Zuckerberg competed in the Bay Area and lost.

Was it you who beat him?

And I was like, no, it wasn't me.

All right, Jay.

So after the break, we're going to find the guy who actually did.

First of all, I was like, I can't believe I just won.

I was like, cool, you know.

And then second of all, I was like, damn, I just beat a billionaire.

So, Jay, the guy who actually did beat Mark Zuckerberg, the guy we've been talking about, the guy we've been talking around this whole time, who is he?

His name is Jeff Ibrahim.

He's 41

and he works at Kaiser Oakland at a hospital.

And he works in the storeroom, right?

So what he does, he sort of orders parts.

He said he moves pallets.

He's in the union and he works from 4 a.m.

to about 2 p.m.

So, you know, like this is like in the Bay Area, it's like, you know, about as close to

sort of typical union guy as you get.

Right.

Around last year,

I would say around, he said around Thanksgiving,

his nine-year-old son Jameson got a little bit bored with the karate that he was taking.

I can't relate to anything else.

Yeah, exactly.

And so Jameson and Jeff decided they would try Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

There was a gym nearby, and they went in, and Jameson really took to it.

And Jeff, because he wanted to spend time with Jameson, this is a great way for them to spend time together, just started getting into it too.

All right, so just to recap, Jeff's place in this ecosystem, Jeff is a dad, a union guy, works the graveyard shift at a hospital.

He is the one who finds himself in this tournament competing against Mark Zuckerberg.

How does he find himself in that specific situation?

That dude fighting, again, the arguably most powerful person on earth?

The reason why he was down there was because his kid was competing, right?

Jameson was in a tournament and he's like, well, I'm down here.

I might as well just enter it myself.

And so it's a four-person tournament.

There are four entrants.

He doesn't know who the other three entrants are.

And so in his first match, he wrestles or

he's up against.

some dude and he beats him, right?

And he's like pumped about it, right?

And then

he's like, all right, it's a four-person tournament.

Now I'm in the finals.

Who am I going to fight in the finals?

And that's when the doors open

and

a man about his size wearing an N95 mask, sort of with a small entourage, walks through the door.

Walks through the doors.

And Jeff's response upon seeing this literally masked man is what?

He says, this guy walks into the gym with a hat on and an N95 mask.

And I swear, I thought this guy was dying.

I thought this guy just wanted to do jiu-jitsu on his final days.

Why?

I'm like, dude, who walks in here with like, you know, with a mask on?

He's like, man, maybe he's really sick.

Is he dying?

Like,

is this his make-and-wish wish is to be in a wrestling match?

So Jeff thinks, okay,

this is

a man using his last breath on an MMA fight.

And

at what point does he realize that this man is not on his deathbed?

This man is

fing Mark.

It's Mark Zuckerberg.

Well, there's like a rustle through the crowd, right?

And

people start whispering about it.

And all of a sudden, you just hear everyone's like, ah, it's Meta.

It's Meta.

And I'm like, what are we talking about?

And I look, hey, it's that guy with a mask on.

I was like, hey, he does look like Mark Zuckerberg.

Why would he be here, though?

And then I started thinking about it.

I was like, I remember he was on Joe Rogan.

He was talking about how he's really into MMA.

From the very first session that I did, like five minutes in, I was like, where has this been my whole life?

At some point, I think somebody comes up to him and says, like, you're going to fight Mark Zuckerberg.

And he's like,

what?

And then, and then Mark Zuckerberg takes off his mask, right?

Because they're about to start and then introduces himself and they shake hands.

And, you know, like, Jeff's description of it was that he was like totally cool and respectful and was serious, right?

And that it wasn't like

he had come with some gigantic entourage and like somebody blew an air horn and like there was a DJ being like, here is the Zara.

You know, or something like, like, you didn't have walkout me sick, right?

Right.

As a secret service is like chloroforming people who look suspicious like in the stand.

Exactly.

Exactly.

No, I think that it was basically about as normal as it can be if you are one of the most famous people in the world.

So Jeff's feeling, like his internal feeling as this is all sinking in in terms of like anxiety level now because he's realizing this is

what?

Well, yeah, I probed him quite a bit about this because I kind of wanted him to say, like, you know, like,

basically, like, you know, let's start the revolution, right?

But he was much more reasonable than that.

And he said, the thing that kept going through my mind was, don't become a meme.

Don't become a meme.

If you lose,

you're going to be a meme.

Were you scared going in?

Nervous because knowing that I got to fight one of the richest men in the world.

And the whole time I'm like, I can't lose because I'm about to be a meme the next day if I lose.

Makes you know, tell us to get on the mat.

You know, it's like, all right, let's go.

I think we gave a little fist bump.

But the whole time I'm thinking, it's like, I cannot lose against this guy.

There's ways in which you can just become a massive meme, and I don't think there's any bigger shortcut than getting choked out by my soccer

So so Jeff understandably fears being imprisoned in the hall of memes for all time.

But what's funny about this is that

what happens next does go extraordinarily viral, except that it's just, it's a different kind of thing.

It becomes this unsolved sort of a mystery, which is, again, a huge thing I've been wanting to find out about with you.

So what the f happened in this match?

So there's video of it that Jeff's wife took, right?

And it's a little bit hard to tell from the video.

But, you know, Zuckerberg's kind of moving around, Jess moving around, and then they start grappling.

The whole fight probably lasted around two and a half minutes.

Immediately after the referee told us the fight,

we're circling around each other.

Next thing you know, Mark grabs onto my gi, pulls me down into him, which is called pulling guard.

From there, in that position, he's on the bottom and he has his legs wrapped around me.

Jeff says he's almost coming out of his shirt because Mark is grabbing him so hard.

And that after a certain amount of time, Mark is trying different types of things.

And then Jeff finally locks in a choke.

I end up sneaking my left arm underneath his head.

And with my fingers, I end up grabbing the inside of my sleeve on my right arm.

I end up hitting what's called an Ezekiel choke on him.

So after I got the choke set up, what I did was my knuckles

were going into the side of his neck.

I'm literally just trying to like hit his jugular and just cut off any blood flow to his head.

And I swear, I could have been in that position for 10 minutes.

You know, I was just on him.

All my weight is just down on his neck.

His face, I mean, when you're in that type of position, anytime someone's choking, of course, your face is going to turn a different color.

His natural instinct was to try and choke me back, but in that type of position that he was in,

it wasn't working for him.

His legs were

wrapped around me like this.

At one point, they went just limp like that for a few seconds.

Next thing you know,

I hear the referee just say, stop.

I let go.

We both get up and we just have this confused look on both of our faces.

I couldn't really understand what the referee was telling him.

All of a sudden,

the referee walks over to me and raises my hand.

And I'm still confused.

And Mark comes up to me and it's like, I didn't tap, did I?

I'm like, no, he didn't tap.

And I guess that's when the referee was explaining to him.

It's like, hey, you were in a really bad position that you weren't going to get out of.

And for your safety, I have to stop the match.

After the fight,

we shook hands.

We gave the bro a hug.

He still seemed a bit like surprised about the referee's ruling.

First of all, I was like, I can't believe I just won.

I was like, cool, you know.

And second of all, I was like, damn, I just beat a billionaire.

But a few weeks later, what Mark Zuckerberg says to the New York Times, and this is a quote from him, is, quote, that never happened.

End quote.

Right.

And then a meta-spokesperson follows up and they reiterate the quote saying, at no point during the competition was Mark knocked unconscious.

That never happened.

End quote, repeating it all again.

So did Mark Zuckerberg actually get choked out by Jeff?

According to Jeff, no.

Right.

And I would say Jeff is,

I don't know, you do this business long enough and you get a sense of who is lying to you and who's not.

And Jeff is not somebody who's going to lie.

You didn't get paid off in the interim is what you're suggesting.

Yeah, right.

And like he, the way that he describes it seems quite credible.

It matches up with everybody else's response,

which is that he had him in deep trouble, but that Zuckerberg wasn't at the point where he was tapping or that he was in real danger, but that like there was also no hope for Zuckerberg.

What about the noises?

Because then there was this alleged snoring

that happened emanating from Mark Zuckerberg.

What about the noises, the sounds Zuck was making?

Apparently, it was just grunting, right?

That kind of sounded like snoring.

The ref said that he uh that like Zuckerberg was snoring.

Yeah, did you hear any of that?

Um, I'm too much in the zone in the moment that

I didn't hear anything.

I think that term snoring can be used very loosely amongst the public and maybe casual jiu-jitsu followers.

He wasn't snoring like how you would snore in bed.

Maybe he was making some weird sounds when I had to choke on him.

The forensics of this thing are...

truly bizarre to me.

And I find this, I generally think that's true of all viral videos.

But for this one, I'm just like, I don't know.

It's hard for me to, as much as there's a part of me that would like for this to be true, it's hard for me to see the evidence in the video.

And then the second controversy is what happened after the fight.

And there's a wide range of theories about it.

There are stories that were printed.

Well, we got to summarize some of these stories because this is where

I got into this.

Because after the fight, just to clarify this,

part of the story is that the ref intervened to prevent further harm to Mark Zuckerberg.

Right.

Right.

He was like, oh, I don't want you to get hurt more.

You're in a bad position.

And the real question around that is, would he have done that for anyone else?

Right.

Right.

Would he have intervened so early for anyone else?

Maybe because he's of his status, the referee was protecting him.

I mean, you hear, I've seen

other competitors in tournaments literally go to sleep from troll cults.

And the referee doesn't stop the person from putting that other person to sleep.

This was a special case, I guess.

You put yourself in the position of this ref.

This is like a tournament at a small high school with white belts who just started doing recreational jiu-jitsu.

Jeff's kid is over there on a different map.

Four months ago, yeah, yeah.

It's like probably someone's.

Your dad just killed Mark Zuckerberg.

Yeah, yeah.

It's someone's dad, right?

It's like, it's like even less populated than than literally baseball because less people do it, you know?

And so you have this guy who's probably somebody's father.

And suddenly he's like, one of the world's richest men is coming on here.

He might get hurt.

He's probably got a lot of lawyers, right?

And like, are you really going to sort of allow him to just get choked out?

I would panic.

I'm going to run the cost-benefit analysis.

And I'm going to say, probably not worth letting this play out.

Right, right.

You're like, no, no, no, no, no.

You're fine, bro, bro.

You know, like, you got a lot to live for, you know?

So we should say that we here at Pablo Torrey finds out, we reached out to the referee in question.

He did not respond to our request for comment.

What he did do, though, is tell UFC Blog about all of this, about Zuckerberg.

Quote, he had started to snore and the rule set says that snoring is a version of a verbal tap.

And again, this is the Rashaman of this, right?

Like there are all of these different accounts that are in conflict.

But in terms of what happened after the viral video finishes, right?

What happened with the refs?

Like what are the accounts there on what happened once we stopped

being able to see

how this transpired?

So we talked to Kai Wu.

He's this guy who's a MMA fighter.

He's now in the Professional Fighters League.

And on the side, he trains Mark Zuckerberg.

He starts to go through a series of events or a series of sequence of actions in which he is asking what happened basically and effectively protesting the decision.

So he goes to the person who's managing the ref who he refers to as like the grand master of the officials.

So Kaiwu, Mark Zuckerberg's trainer, calls for the manager.

Right, right, right.

Immediately.

There is a head official over all the officials.

He's the

grand master, I guess you could say the head official.

So he's the one that, when you disagree with the ref, you can bring this guy in and he'll come clear the air.

We kind of chatted it out.

And after watching footage and whatever,

I guess he decided, he was like, yeah, this is, this, this was a mistake.

They sort of review the footage together, right?

And they say,

well, this was probably a mistake.

It was a bad decision, but they're not going to actually try and overturn the result because it's probably like too late to do any of that.

But he, and then he, you know, his hope was that the ref would call it a no contest instead of a win for Jeff, but that didn't end up happening.

And then Mark, I guess, sort of just accepted that this had happened.

But just to clarify, though, so the ref's manager upon inquiry from the Zuckerberg camp says

we actually probably shouldn't have ended the fight.

According to Kai, but who knows?

Jeff does not know about any of this or he didn't say that he knew what was happening because I think he was just sort of in shock, right?

A lot's happened to Jeff in a very short amount of time.

Like Jeff somehow pulled the amazing stuff.

I cannot think of another instance where this happens where like the meme polarization possibilities are so high, right?

Oh my god.

If you win, you're a hero and you're like an online legend for at least three months.

I mean,

this is first paragraph of the obit for Jeff.

Yeah, yeah.

Or like, you know, like if there had been like a real close-up shot, for example, right, of Zuckerberg like kind of struggling and Jeff just like yanking on him, then Jeff is a hero.

That image is everywhere.

It's like, you know, it's like goals memes.

It's like, you know, me.

That feeling when.

Yeah, me, my anxiety, you know, one of the meme.

Late capitalism.

Right, exactly.

And then if he loses, then all of that is flipped around.

And so he had somehow, you know, I don't know, it must be an amazing experience.

Like, Jeff is an extremely humble guy.

And so he didn't quite tell us the full extent of the celebrations that he was doing.

But he was telling me, like, you know, sometimes when I'm out with my friends, they'll like yell at strangers and be like, this is the guy that beat Mark Zuckerberg.

But wait, just to get to the bigger picture here now, because

what I'm realizing is that this, not just the meme dynamic here, but this just

power dynamic doesn't exist anywhere else, but where we have been exploring and now describing, which is the world of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, right?

Like, in no other place can I imagine, in just human history, Jay, does someone this powerful, a Mark Zuckerberg, an Elon Musk, even, do they potentially line up to get their asses kicked by the normies from steerage class?

Like, they just don't volunteer for this sort of a risk.

But here,

this is specifically what they are so passionately monologuing about is effectively this thing.

Like, it's just hard to think of what the equivalent would even be, right?

Like, it's just

hard to like Mark Zuckerberg, to his credit, went into a high school gym, right, as a white belt, not somebody who was a master, as somebody who was a novice.

And he decided that he was just going to enter an open division competition, that he showed up and that he fought somebody that he didn't know, right?

And that with the full risk of losing with the understanding that if he lost, that it was going to be a big deal, right?

That everybody would figure out.

And if he loses, then exactly what happened is going to happen.

Right.

You know,

when I assigned this story to you, I was assuming that everybody would have signed an NDA.

Right, right, right.

You're Mark Zuckerberg and you are not in control.

In all of these senses, you're definitionally not in control of something that would seem to be the most obvious thing you'd want to have power over.

Right.

There's like the supervillain version of this is is basically that he makes he brings in a procession of random people that are like picked up off the street, approached by a man wearing like a trench coat saying, Hey, would you like to make a quick $5,000?

And they go in and like they're worse than Mark Zuckerberg, and Mark Zuckerberg beats them up, feels great about himself.

He has his like

has his like uh bodyguards inject them with like some sort of like tranquilizer approach.

Yeah, exactly.

They wake up in a dungeon somewhere, and then the movie starts, they have to get out, right?

Like, they're like, How do we escape from Zuckerberg Island?

But they, uh, But he didn't do any of that, right?

It's crazy to me.

It's shocking to me that.

Right.

He didn't take everyone's cell phones.

Right.

Like, you could imagine this.

Dave Chappelle takes cell phones at comedy shows.

Mark Zuckerberg is letting himself get choked out with no censorship restrictions.

He went out and he sort of did it as it's supposed to be done, which is that in these small local tournaments, you know, with enthusiasts surrounded by the people who really love and are learning the sport.

And for that, I don't know.

You got to give him a call.

I would never in my life think you have to hand it to Mark Zuckerberg, but

you kind of have to hand it to Mark Zuckerberg for that.

You know, I don't know.

It's like, respect to him for doing that.

I don't know where else

these guys are signing up to get their asses kicked by normal people.

I don't know where they're lining up to be in the dunk tank, right?

To put themselves at all of this, all this risk.

and like now i'm realizing i think i'm in favor of it the more tech bro

that want to sign up for brazilian jiu-jitsu and go through what mark zuckerberg went through that seems to be a net positive actually

they should all fight peter teal you know elon musk uh

meg whitman like whoever right just get all of the valley all you know like all the all-in if the all-in podcast bros signed up i would start training jiu-jitsu so hard you know

just dreaming of the day, you know,

in an Ezekiel joke.

God, yeah, I would go crazy.

Jay Caspian Kang, thank you for taking this assignment and helping me find out about the story.

Thank you.

I'm admittedly kind of embarrassed by what it is that I have found out today as I sit down at my keyboard to try and synthesize this.

Because I'll be honest,

I signed this story because I have a long-standing distrust of Mark Zuckerberg.

A distrust that dates back to college.

And because I also think that tech bros, cause playing as MMA fighters, basically gentrifying a martial art, it felt like a trend that I wanted to end.

But today,

what I really found out is that I had this story all wrong.

We should want as many Silicon Valley billionaires as possible to become obsessed with Brazilian jiu-jitsu

so that all of these masters of the universe, the ultra-wealthy, like Mark Zuckerberg, can know exactly what it feels like

to be not just choked out but haunted, probably forever,

by some perfectly normal average dude named Jeff.

This has been Pablo Torre finds out,

a Metalark Media production.

And I'll talk to you next time.