- Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been curating a "shredded" persona over the last year.
- His training regimen drew attention after he agreed to a possible cage fight with Elon Musk.
- Zuckerberg's newest post shows him sparring with MMA fighters on a floating barge.
Long gone are the days when Mark Zuckerberg drew the internet's collective mockery for wearing far, far too much sunscreen while surfing. The new summertime Zuck spars with MMA fighters on a floating barge.
In a joint video post on Instagram with Nigerian and New Zealand MMA fighter Israel Adesanya, Zuckerberg trains on the water with Adesanya and Australian MMA fighter Alexander Volkanovski, kicking, grappling, and flipping — all set to a clip from the "Mission: Impossible" soundtrack.
We still have yet to see a cage fight between Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, a potential match-up that's been discussed since June, when Musk tweeted that he'd be up for a cage match with Zuckerberg and the Meta CEO agreed. While that fight may never happen at all — Zuckerberg has since said "Elon isn't serious" about an official fight after the Tesla CEO later floated the idea of a "noble" debate instead — the Facebook cofounder has continued showing off his new shredded persona in full force.
This is just the billionaire Meta CEO's latest flex, following posts earlier this year commemorating his blue belt in jiu-jitsu, his first jiu jitsu tournament, and a picture of Zuckerberg standing shirtless between Adesanya and Volkanovski.
Zuckerberg first started training in jiu-jitsu during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and now trains in jiu-jitsu and MMA three to four times a week — he told podcaster Lex Fridman that learning martial arts involved him getting "beaten up a lot."
All the jiu-jitsu content follows a shot of him doing a trick on his hydrofoil surfboard, undoubtedly a far cooler picture than the paparazzi snapshot of him with a face plastered in sunscreen that went viral over two years ago. He's since reclaimed the latter with a surfboard design showing an artist's illustration of the image, which he posted with the caption "the sun never stood a chance."
He also made a not-so-subtle nod to the much-memed photo back in 2021, showing off a hydrofoil-surfing look for his avatar in a game for Meta's metaverse that came complete with sunscreen. The virtual look was called "SPF 5000."