Mark Zuckerberg Is Denying That he Got Knocked Out In A Jiu-Jitsu Match (He Was Just Grunting, OK?)

According to a new report Facebook founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was allegedly knocked unconscious during a Jiu-Jitsu match last month, prompting the referee to halt the competition. The alleged knock out was recently reported in The New York Times, and Zuckerberg is apparently not thrilled. Not only is he personally denying he was unconscious, but so is his coach and the full weight of Meta’s seven billion dollar empire.

Via The Daily Beast:

“At no point during the competition was Mark knocked unconscious,” Elana Widmann, a spokesperson for Meta, said in an email to The Daily Beast. “That never happened.”

Widmann also claimed a Meta spokesperson attending the competition and witnessed an exchange in which the referee “apologized to Mark and his coach after the match for prematurely calling the match.”

The Times reported that the referee called the match after Zuckerberg was reportedly knocked unconscious by a chokehold, to the point the were the Meta CEO was allegedly snoring. However, both Zuckerberg and his coach disputed that claim and personally contacted the writer of the Times profile, Joe Bernstein, to say that actually Zuckerberg was just grunting.

“They both insisted that Mr. Zuckerberg had *not* lost consciousness, and the coach said that the referee had mistaken his effortful grunting for snores,” Bernstein tweeted in an update.

Zuckerberg allegedly being knocked out is a markedly different story than what Joe Rogan gushed about last month. The podcaster called the Meta CEO a “f*cking savage” following reports that Zuckerberg scored a gold medal in his first match. There was no mention of a dispute over Zuckerberg possibly being unconscious or just grunting really hard.

(Via The Daily Beast)