Tech billionaires on the mat: What jujitsu reveals about Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Silicon Valley

We wonder what their entrance music would be.

In June, after it was revealed Mark Zuckerberg's Meta (META) was creating Threads — a rival to X, formerly known as Twitter — Elon Musk tweeted "I’m up for a cage match if he is lol." That spurred a wave of media discourse fueled by trash-talking between the two tech moguls.

While the match appears to have been called off, with Zuckerberg recently posting on Threads, "I think it's time to move on," both revealed a common denominator: their apparent deep appreciation for Brazilian jujitsu, a self-defense martial art emphasizing grappling and ground fighting.

Zuckerberg was recently promoted to a blue belt in jujitsu. Meanwhile, Musk practiced jujitsu in an impromptu session with Lex Fridman, a black belt, computer scientist, and podcaster.

Silicon Valley more broadly has an extensive jujitsu community, too.

So how have we gotten to a place where tech billionaires, who could do absolutely anything in their spare time, are willing to beat each other up? Yahoo Finance spoke to three jujitsu experts about why tech wealth is funneling into the martial art.

David and Goliath

As it turns out, jujitsu and tech have a lot in common.

First, there's an inherent underdog paradigm, one that parallels tech's frequent disruptor versus incumbent narratives. According to jujitsu black belt instructor Rener Gracie, anyone can prevail in a match with "technique, timing, leverage, and distance management," even over stronger opponents.

"Jujitsu can enable anyone to be David against their own Goliath, ... and that extends beyond combat," said Gracie, who recently authored a book called "The 32 Principles: Harnessing the Power of Jiu-Jitsu to Succeed in Business, Relationships, and Life."

And in tech, that David vs. Goliath story of smaller companies innovating better to beat giants holds a lot of power.

Just look at Zuck, who pulled all-nighters at Facebook to squash the larger MySpace. As for Musk, he took on credit card giants like American Express when co-founding PayPal and now has taken on behemoths Ford and General Motors at Tesla.

"If you saw two people fighting and they're in a scuffle on the ground, and one person is on top and the other is on the bottom, you're conditioned to think the person on the bottom is losing the fight," Gracie explained. "In jujitsu, not only is that not true, but in many senses the opposite is true. ... Jujitsu teaches us how to win in worst-case scenarios, the sort where you can be on the bottom against a giant and not only defend yourself but prevail."

Beyond combat

The deep creative side of tech powerbrokers also has tie-ins with jujitsu principles. Like tech, jujitsu is fundamentally about experimentation, said Chris Matakas, a jujitsu black belt instructor, performance coach, and author.

"Jujitsu is like an exercise in the scientific method," he said. "You're in there, you're training with somebody, and you have a goal. So you enact a movement toward that goal, and you encounter resistance. Pretty much all jujitsu is running an experiment, and you get immediate feedback on whether or not that experiment was successful. ... It's really problem-solving training, which has such a huge carryover."

Rites of passage, such as the belt promotion that Zuckerberg went through earlier this year, also have appeal in Silicon Valley's insular and hierarchical tech ecosystem, which has its own language of growth, VCs, and coding.

"We're social animals, and jujitsu really hits it out of the park when it comes to forging these tribal bonds and providing rites of passage," said jujitsu expert Roy Dean, who is writing a book called "Mentorship and Mastery."

'Reality reinforcement' for billionaires

Though running a tech company and performing jujitsu share many similarities, the differences also matter — and they may be another draw for ego-centric tech billionaires.

For one, in a world where tech billionaires can buy almost anything, you can't buy the skill represented by a jujitsu belt, Dean told Yahoo Finance. In an industry that believes in its own meritocracy like tech does, that's highly appealing.

"If you're a rich tech person, how can you continue to distinguish yourself? One of the ways is through physical literacy and mastery," Dean continued. "There's a lot of lying you can do in this life, but this sort of jujitsu-style ground fighting is a reality reinforcement device. If you lose on the mat, you lose, even if you gave it your best effort."

Jujitsu can also get extreme, which can be humbling for even the most successful tech moguls. That's a handy attribute for a tech billionaire, who may have lost it in their rise to self-described greatness.

"The goal is to make your partner 'tap,'" Matakas said. "What a tap means is, hey, if we were really fighting, you'd have killed me. So there's an element of humility, where to get from a white belt to a black belt, you'd have to have been 'killed' thousands of times. By the time you get there, you can't think too highly of yourself."

The Silicon Valley schoolyard

With the Tech Titans Cage Match put off indefinitely, we may never know for sure who is the better fighter.

But to Dean, the smart money would be on the blue belt, Zuckerberg, who has already begun his jujitsu journey, a practice that takes years to learn.

"It's not about Zuckerberg trying to one-up somebody to reaffirm his masculinity," Dean said. "He's fascinated by the art and wants to glorify the art by doing charity, showing his progress, giving credit to his teacher."

As for Musk, his impulse toward extreme responses that vary in facetiousness — for example, his recent offer to show up at random for a fight at Zuckerberg's home — may not be particularly well suited to jujitsu.

Much of jujitsu is about calibrating responses "perfectly and justly," Dean said, and actually injuring anyone in training or full-blown sparring is frowned upon.

"For Musk, it's schoolyard, gauche: 'If I can't beat him this way, I'll find another way,'" Dean added.

Allie Garfinkle is a Senior Tech Reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter at @agarfinks and on LinkedIn.

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