Mark Zuckerberg's MMA career put on hold by ACL tear

The Facebook founder and current Meta CEO tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee while training for a mixed martial arts bout. 

Zuckerberg developed an interest in Brazilian jiu-jitsu recently, and won gold and silver medals this summer in a tournament in Woodside, California. The match was controversial, as the referee stopped the fight when he determined Zuckerberg had gone unconscious while being choked out.

When a non-billionaire turns purple in an Ezekiel choke, it's no big deal when a referee stops their fight. When it's one of the world's richest men, an army of public relations people are there to insist that their employer did not pass out, is very handsome and that the Metaverse is actually really cool and not a waste of $46 billion for Meta.

A Meta spokesperson released an official statement declaring, "At no point during the competition was Mark knocked unconscious. That never happened." Zuckerberg, weirdly concerned about his reputation as an amateur jiu-jitsu artist even as Congress repeatedly investigates his company, enlisted his coach to back up his claim that the referee misinterpreted his "effortful grunting" as snoring.

This summer, fellow billionaire Elon Musk challenged Zuckerberg to a cage match, despite their extreme weight difference - Zuckerberg competes as a featherweight. After weeks of back-and-forth between the insanely rich men, Zuckerberg claimed it was "time to move on" from a possible billionaire-on-billionaire battle, possibly motivated by Meta launching Threads to compete with Musk's X.com.

Recently, Musk declared on Joe Rogan's podcast that he'd fight Zuckerberg "any place, anywhere, under any rules."

While it's entertaining to see billionaires squabbling like children, the whole fight story feels like a way to distract from research describing the "profound risk of harm" that social media presents to children, or how both men's companies' algorithms are reportedly amplifying extreme political speech and radicalizing users for the sake of profits.

After all, if both billionaires can't keep from lying about amateur martial arts fights, how can you believe they care about lies on their own platforms? At least this torn ACL will slow down the "fake news" about the billionaire brawl.