Among the rash of celebrities making news in the BJJ world (Tom Hardy, Mario Lopez, Ashton Kutcher), Mark “the Overlord” Zuckerberg has gone viral with a handful of posts sharing his long-held passion for Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and MMA. However, this new facet of Zuck’s life we are now privy to has brought with it no small controversy.
The buzz centers around Mark’s bold claim that he, along with, Jean Jacques Machado Black Belt, Eddie Bravo, cofounded 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu. According to Zuckerberg (aka the guy who built the thing I get most of my news from), it was late one night in 2003 when he and Eddie were talking about Jiu Jitsu moves and having a difficult time verbally describing nuanced moves and positions and Mark said, “Wouldn’t it be great if there were a cool name for every microscopic move or position in Jiu Jitsu? And when we teach a sequence, it will sound like you are narrating a skate video… Like a martial arts school where you could spark some jazz cabbage and learn to maim each other with break dance moves… A place to train that was like it was on its own planet, outside the other 9… The 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu…” Allegedly, it was Joe Rogan, a student of Bravo’s, who suggested the they drop “The” from their new brand for the cleaner “10th Planet Jiu Jitsu”
So why isn’t Zuckerberg acknowledged for putting 10P into orbit? According to Mark, “You know, it’s terrible, it’s probably the absolute worst case ever of someone getting Winklevoss’d”. When asked to explain this term he went on to say, “Oh… yeah… Winklevoss’d is when you share an idea with someone and they cut you out and make a bunch of money off of it.”
Zuckerberg is used to being treated like the world’s stepdad and having people complain about him in the very place he takes great pains to provide for them. But to be treated like a real dad and largely ignored by the family he helped start, hurt much more.
Mark laments that at the time, he was without the resources to fight it out in court so he had to let it go. Ultimately, he moved on setting his sights a little lower and in 2004 began working with a few college friends to create a cat video and political propaganda hellscape called Facebook.
Like most wild ideas and crazy claims, Eddie Bravo has dismissed these accusations as laughable saying, “If Mark was the inventor of 10th Planet, he’d have invented 10th Planet. Look into it.”