Mark Zuckerberg Now Obsessed With MMA, ‘Rolling and Wrestling With Friends’

Noted t-ball and surfing star Mark Zuckerberg revealed to MMA/ivermectin/etc. guy Joe Rogan that he has recently gotten into mixed martial arts because he can no longer spend enough time on his Hawaii ranch surfing.

In a wide ranging conversation in which Zuckerberg suggested that we will soon bring VR headsets to coffee shops, play poker with “hologram cards” and turn various physical objects into holograms, Zuckerberg revealed that he newly believes that mixed martial arts is “the best sport,” and that he is now a big fan of “rolling and wrestling with friends” when he is not busy surfing 15-foot waves on his hydrofoil in Hawaii.

“I really like watching UFC for example, but I also like doing the sport. It’s because I have a connection to it,” Zuckerberg said. “Since COVID, I got super into surfing and foiling, and then really into MMA. I know a lot of people who do it. There’s actually this really interesting connection between people who surf and do jiu-jitsu.”

Zuckerberg said that he has been training under famed jiu-jitsu player Dave Camarillo, who among his many other accomplishments has trained UFC legends like Daniel Cormier and Cain Velasquez, who are considered the deadliest unarmed combatants in human history, as well as celebrities like Tim Ferriss.  

"A bunch of the guys who I do that with, they kind of, have gyms on Kauai and I, basically collected a bunch of recommendations, ran them by a bunch of people who I know, and I trained with this guy Dave Camarillo—Guerilla Jiu Jitsu—the crazy thing is, it really is the best sport." 

Are you someone who trains with Mark Zuckerberg and is willing to violate the traditional sanctity of the gym to provide stories about or video of his intense sessions? Please get in touch: jason.koebler@vice.com or Signal: 202-505-1702

Zuckerberg, whose company has been blamed for enabling genocide in Myanmar because it did not bother to hire moderators who speak Burmese, for example, added that one of his life’s biggest regrets is competing on the fencing team in high school rather than wrestling.

“The question isn’t how did I get into it, it’s how did I not know about it til right now?,” Zuckerberg told Rogan. “From, like, the very first session that I did, like, five minutes in—where has this been my whole life? My mom made me do three varsity sports and my life took a wrong turn when I chose to do fencing competitively instead of wrestling in high school or something. There’s something so primal about it, I don’t know. Since then I’ve just introduced a bunch of my friends to it—we train together, and we like, wrestle together, and there’s a certain intensity to it that I like.”

“I also find just, wrestling around with friends, it’s awesome,” he added.

Wrestling is an incredibly dangerous sport, with traumatic brain injury being one of the major risks. One study found that it causes more concussions than any other NCAA sport. Zuckerberg has previously mentioned taking “head blows” while surfing monster waves.

Zuckerberg said that MMA has replaced surfing and hydrofoiling for him when he is unable to be on his Hawaii ranch, which he obtained in part by suing native Hawaiians who had a claim to the land. While he mentioned training wrestling and jiu-jitsu, two of the three main constituent elements of MMA, in the interview, he didn’t mention whether he’s taken up any striking discipline.

“My parents pushed me really hard, they said, you’re going to do really well in school, and you’re going to be on three varsity sports teams. I’ve found especially since the company has scaled and become more stressful [doing extremely cool sports] has become more important. My sort of day is—you wake up in the morning, look at my phone, get a million messages of stuff that comes in, it’s usually not good. Right, people like, reserve the good stuff to tell me in person, so it’s like, what’s going on in the world I need to pay attention to that day. It’s like, almost every day you wake up and it’s like you’re punched in the stomach. And it’s like, ‘OK, well fuck, now I need to go reset myself and be productive, and not be stressed about it.’ So basically, I go, I read, I take in the information, and then I go do something physical for an hour or two and reset myself. Over time I’ve found that it’s not just—I used to run a lot, but the problem with running is you can think a lot while you’re running, so I’ve, especially over the past few years I’ve gotten into things that require full focus. So, at the beginning of COVID, I mentioned I spend a lot of time in Kauai, our family has a ranch down there, and like, I spent a lot of time foiling and surfing. If you’re foiling or surfing and you’re on a wave, you have to pay attention the whole time or else you’re going to fall and maybe get held under, and that’s not a great experience. I don’t know if you surf. 

It requires full engagement the whole time, and then, this is sort of how I got into MMA too, now I don’t spend as much time in Kauai because things are ramping back up and I’m in the office a lot more, so, it’s like, alright, there’s not as much foiling in Palo Alto? What’s a thing that is both super engaging physically but also intellectually where you can’t afford to focus on something else? And I think to some degree, MMA is the perfect thing. You stop paying attention for one second and you’re gonna end up on the bottom. So I’ve just found that is just really important for me, in terms of what I do and being able to just kind of maintain my energy level, maintain my focus. After an hour or two of working out or rolling or wrestling with friends or training with different folks, it’s like, you’re ready to solve all the problems for the day, I’ve fully processed all the different news for the day that’s come in and we’re just ready to go.”

Zuckerberg added that MMA now helps guide his entire worldview, which is perhaps notable to the nearly one half of humanity who uses one of his platforms and for whom he is the ultimate arbiter of: "There’s a lot of good parallels for philosophy of life and, like foiling and surfing, jiu-jitsu, MMA, I think it sort of teaches you about the flow and momentum of things."

Asked by Motherboard why Zuckerberg decided to do a podcast with a guy who has had to apologize for repeatedly saying the n-word, has had on transphobic authors, has repeatedly spread disinformation about COVID, etc, a Facebook spokesperson declined to comment on the record. Joe Rogan’s guest Friday was COVID-troll Alex Berenson, who was temporarily banned from Twitter for his COVID tweets.