Getty Image / Jeff Bottari / Zuffa LLC
Mark Zuckerberg celebrated a major milestone in his martial arts journey over the weekend.
The META CEO and Facebook co-founder was awarded his blue belt, the second of five possible belts awarded to adults. His blue belt ceremony ran simultaneously to Dave Camarillo, one of Zuckerberg’s Jiu-Jitsu trainers and mentors, who received his 5th degree black belt.
Mark Zuckerberg revealed his Jiu-Jitsu milestone on Instagram and on Threads:
On Threads, just as on Instagram, Zuck wrote “Surprisingly emotional to see @davecamarillo get his 5th degree black belt today, and honored to get promoted to compete at blue belt. I just love this sport. It’s so primal and lets me be my true competitive self.”
This was all happening while Elon Musk announced in the middle of the night on Saturday that he was changing the name of Twitter to X.
Musk received overwhelming pushback from users on The Bird Site who astutely pointed out that companies can’t buy the type of branding Twitter built over the years and to throw that all away for ‘X’ might be the biggest blunder of Elon’s tenure as Twitter CEO.
Congratulations rang in on Instagram for Mark Zuckerberg’s blue belt achievement. His friends and colleagues wrote “Congratulations Mark, Well deserved.” And “I’m also a BJJ blue belt. Let’s spar! Let’s show Elon what’s up!”
The amount of spam comments on his post is quite concerning. But they did announce recently that Threads would begin rate limiting to combat spam bots.
As mentioned above, the replies to Elon Musk’s ‘big news’ and Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino’s tweets about renaming Twitter to ‘X’ weren’t quite as congratulatory as Mark’s followers were.
Zuckerberg seems to be enjoying life a LOT lately. He was seen wake surfing Lake Tahoe recently with some famous and powerful friends.
The Blue Belt Test varies. But the Jiu-Jitsu brotherhood has an explanation of what they believe the Blue Belt test should be. According to them, that test includes:
1. Have a holistic understanding of the art
2. Have a broad (but not necessarily deep) range of techniques that cover the major positions
3. Make an attempt to improve his/her general athleticism
4. Have a good knowledge of essential concepts
5. Be very proficient in defence and escapes
6. Be very proficient with the Side-Mount position (both offensively and defensively)
Mark is progressing quickly in his Jiu-Jitsu career.