Zuck Picks AI Over MMA For 2025
01/12/2025 03:00 PM
The Meta boss still wants to have at least one pro or competitive fight, but needs to find time in his busy schedule to get into the right mindset.
Is Mark Zuckerberg vs. Elon Musk more likely now that UFC CEO Dana White is on the board of directors for Meta, Zuckerberg's Silicon Valley empire that includes Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp?
White teased the freakshow fight between the two tech billionaires through 2023, but Zuck accused Musk of ducking him, and then the Facebook exec tore his ACL near the end of the year. We haven't heard much on that front through 2024, but Zuckerberg discussed his fighting future on the latest episode of The Joe Rogan Experience.
"I want to [fight]," Zuckerberg told Rogan. "And I think I probably will, but we'll see."
The big road block? It's an extremely pivotal moment for the tech industry right now with artificial intelligence (A.I.) making massive leaps on a constant basis.
"2025 is going to be a very busy year on the AI side," Mark said. "And I think the idea of having a competition, you really need to get into the head space of 'I'm going to fight someone this week.' So I need to figure this out because I don't know how, with everything that's going on in AI, I'm going to have like a week or two where I can just get into, like, 'I'm going to fight someone.' But it's good training and I would like to [fight] at some point."
Interestingly enough, Zuckerberg said he tore his ACL sparring, not during jiu jitsu training. That led him to reevaluate how dangerous each training regiment was, and it sounds like he decided striking is less hard on the body.
"The thing about the ACL injury is I kind of thought before, 'All right, I'm going to do some jiu jitsu competitions, I want to do one MMA fight, one pro or competitive MMA fight,'" Zuckerberg said. "And then I figured I'd go back to jiu jitsu. But tearing the ACL striking is a little more of a fluke. I think you're much more likely to do that grappling."
"So going through the ACL experience didn't make me want to just exclusively go do the version where you're just attacking joints all day long. I'm like, 'All right, I can take a few more punches to the face before going back to that.'"
