"He got caught in an Ezekiel and I waited, but he didn’t fight back."

Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, whose pivot to combat sports from surfing is by now well known, was lambasted on these pages yesterday for an apparent temper tantrum following his loss in a jiujitsu contest.

(Zuckerberg claimed gold in the no-gi div and silver in the gi.)

New evidence has emerged, however, that Zuck took his L with grace, the referee brown belt Lucas Costa telling Bloody Elbow,

“There was no argument. It was in Gi and he got choked out. That was the video you saw. I stopped it and he wanted to check with me about why I stopped it. He didn’t know what was happening, which was one of the reasons I stopped it. But he had started to snore and the rule set says that snoring is a version of a verbal tap…

“I was paying a lot of attention. I was paying even more attention because it was Mark. He got caught in an Ezekiel and I waited, but he didn’t fight back. And I was waiting, but on the third snore I had to stop the fight. He was very polite but he wanted to know how the rules work.”

An Ezekiel from someone’s closed guard, oowee, it’s a last-minute hail mary. Click here for deets. 

On the Joe Rogan podcast, the black belt comedian and broadcaster described Zuckerberg as a “fucking savage… Imagine you’re right about to compete in like maybe your first competition. ‘Well just give it a try. I mean, what’s the worst thing that could happen?’ Worst thing that could happen — you get strangled by a super-nerd in front of the whole world.”

Costa was also relatively complimentary of white belt Zuck’s skills,

“I was impressed… He seemed like a normal guy. Looked me in the eye, gave me a firm handshake and an even bigger surprise was that he fights well…He goes forward a lot. He attacks more,” although Costa did add the caveat, “With very little defence.”

Who needs defence?

Who do you wanna be, the marauding killer, an entertainer, or the ass-scooting staller, accumulating points in your purse?

“You take some head blows along the way!”

The fight world was cock-a-hoop yesterday following Mark Zuckerberg’s domination of a jiujitsu contest where the Facebook founder and part-owner of Instagram won gold and silver medals competing in the Gi and non-Gi divisions.

A who’s who of the fight world were quick to dive onto Zuck’s snorkel, including UFC champs Brandon Moreno, Alex Volkanovski and Izzy Adesanya.

It was a long way from his hard-core big-wave sessions on Maui with one-time BFF Kai Lenny that had become so full-on they tested, he said, his very mortality.

“I do a fair amount of, like, extreme sport type stuff so I’m definitely aware of (my mortality),” Zuck told podcaster Lex Friedman. “I train hard. So if I’m gonna go out in a 15-foot wave then I’ll make sure we have the right safety gear, make sure I’m used to that spot and all that stuff…(But) you take some head blows along the way.”

After an almost uniformly positive response to his success on the mat yesterday, the billionaire following fellow celebrity Tom Hardy into the competitive jiujitsu game, footage has emerged of Zuckerberg appearing to argue a decision in his gi match and, later, pulling on his opponent’s elastic yoga pants in the no-gi roll.

Real hard to tell from the footy taken from the back row but looks like his opponent tries to cross-collar choke the billionaire from Zuck’s closed guard, a classic white belt move that works often enough at the lower levels, either that or he stacks him on his neck, Zuck taps, fight stops, Zuck says he didn’t tap, fight gets recast as a draw, something y’don’t often see in the jiujitsu game.

And, in his no-gi brawl, Zuck starts tearing hell out of his opponent’s plastic tee and pants before the ref pulls him into line.

No comment yet from Kai Lenny who has previously described Zuckerberg as “really cool” and “Super fit. Like … strong, strong strong. Physically strong.”