{"id":352378,"date":"2025-12-18T02:36:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T02:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/352378\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T02:36:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T02:36:07","slug":"merab-dvalishvili-slaps-mark-zuckerberg-in-sparring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/352378\/","title":{"rendered":"Merab Dvalishvili slaps Mark Zuckerberg in sparring"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just a couple of months ago, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg drew laughs online after sparring<\/a> with reigning Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Light Heavyweight champion Alex Pereira. The session was clearly playful \u2014 and understandably so \u2014 as Pereira could have ended things with a sneeze if he wanted to.<\/p>\n

This time around, however, Zuckerberg stepped in with someone a bit closer to his size.<\/p>\n

Former UFC Bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili, who dropped his title just two weeks ago<\/a>, shared footage of a three-round sparring session with the tech billionaire \u2014 and surprisingly, it wasn\u2019t a complete joke.<\/p>\n

Dvalishvili released roughly six minutes of footage from their training session, and while \u201cThe Machine\u201d was obviously pulling his punches, the exchanges were real enough. Zuckerberg worked actively, even managing to land a couple of takedowns on the former champion \u2014 though he paid for it by catching a slap in return.<\/p>\n

Check out the video below:<\/p>\n

The session adds to Zuckerberg\u2019s growing reputation as an MMA hobbyist, but everyone better cool it on making fun of the billionaire robot, as UFC CEO Dana White has repeatedly defended him whenever critics pile on<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople talk s\u2014t about Zuckerberg,\u201d White said. \u201cZuckerberg is actually a great athlete. He trains in MMA. He surfs. He does all this s\u2014t. Everybody thinks he\u2019s some computer nerd \u2014 Mark Zuckerberg will beat the living s\u2014t out of you.\u201d<\/p>\n

White didn\u2019t stop there.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe moral of the story is all of you telephone tough guys and internet tough guys that talk s\u2014t about Mark Zuckerberg?\u201d White added. \u201cZuckerberg will beat the s\u2014t out of every one of you. Just for the record.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just a couple of months ago, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg drew laughs online after sparring with reigning Ultimate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352379,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,33601,638,82,702,3194],"class_list":["post-352378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-latest-ufc-mma-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc-news","tag-videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}