Mark Zuckerberg Trains Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
Facebook Co-Founder Mark Zuckerberg has recently been seen making an appearance on Episode #1863 of ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’ discussing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu with the host Joe Rogan who is a UFC commentator and BJJ black belt as well. Rogan has been a big proponent of Brazilian jiu-jitsu for close to three decades. He is also friends with Eddie Bravo, a pioneer of the discipline who has developed his own system of No-Gi jiu-jitsu called 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu.
Zuckerberg Trains Under Dave Camarillo
Zuckerberg revealed that he 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, which is another hobby of his. Zuckerberg said that he has been training under the well-established Dave Camarillo, who among his many other accomplishments has trained UFC legends like Daniel Cormier and Cain Velasquez. While speaking with the long-time UFC commentator, Mark Zuckerberg discussed how he originally got into BJJ:
“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, 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.”
“Where Has This Been My Whole Life?”
He continues: “The question isn’t how did I get into it, it’s how did I not know about it until 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 is a certain intensity to it that I like. I also find just wrestling around with friends is awesome.”
“MMA is the perfect thing”
When speaking of why he likes MMA and BJJ Zuckerberg states that it helps his frame of mind which isn’t unfamiliar with combat sports practitioners (because you have to be constantly focused if you don’t want to slip up).
“MMA is like the perfect thing. Because it’s like, if you stop paying attention for one second, you’re gonna end up on the bottom. Yeah, right. So I’ve just found that that is just really important for me, in terms of like, what I do and being able to just kind of maintain my energy level, maintain my focus, because then like, after, you know, an hour or two of, of working out or rolling or wrestling with friends or training with different folks, it’s like, now I’m ready to go solve whatever problem at work for the day and like I’ve fully processed all the different news for the day. That’s, that’s come in, and and we’re just ready to go.”
Hear More Zuckerberg BJJ Talk
However, this wasn’t the first time Zuckerberg has openly shared with the world his interest in combat sports – in a 2022 podcast with Lex Fridman, it was revealed by Lex that Zuckerberg had started training in the art of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. You can see this in the video below. Lex Fridman is a massive BJJ geek and is actually a BJJ black belt as well.
Read about Tom Hardy winning Double Gold competing at a BJJ tournament recently here