‘Mark Zuckerberg Should Be Banned’: Alex Pereira Loses Title Moments After Meeting Meta CEO at UFC 313, Fans Blame ‘Zuck Curse’

It would appear that Alex Pereira has become the newest fighter to fall to a celebrity curse. And no, it’s not Drake. The former light heavyweight champion seems to have been brought down by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. At least, that’s what the UFC community on X thinks.

While a poor camp and an even poorer execution of his skills could be blamed for the loss, Poatan fans have chosen poor Zuckerberg as an excuse.

Headlining Saturday night’s card, Pereira suffered a unanimous decision (48-47, 48-47, 49-46) loss to arch-rival Magomed Ankalaev in the pair’s title grudge fight. With the loss, the Brazilian’s impressive 4-fight title run comes to a rather timid halt.

It was a closely contested fight that saw an extremely prepared Pereira stuff in excess of 10 takedowns from his Dagestani opponent. However, it was Ankalaev’s sharpness on his feet that kept the aggressive Brazilian on his toes and made him unusually cautious about pressing his opponent to dominate the fight.

While the fight went down to the wire, Pereira would consider himself lucky for not having been stopped in the very second round. Saved by the bell, literally!

Firing off a massive counter shot, Ankalaev would ride out the later rounds at the fence, assuming control time en route to a unanimous win.

It should be noted that while there are superstitions at best, Zuckerberg does have a telling history with the likes of Alexander Volkanovski and Israel Adesanya.

Accompanying Volkanovski to the Octagon last year at UFC 298, Zuckerberg watched on as the Aussie lost his title via knockout to Ilia Topuria.

Back in 2023, the Meta kingpin was also seen training in Jiu-Jitsu with Adesanya in a bid to challenge billionaire Elon Musk. While the Musk fight never came to fruition, courtesy of the Tesla boss chickening out, Adesanya’s fate seemingly faced the brunt of the curse.

Since the video of the training was posted online, Izzy has fought thrice in the octagon. At UFC 293, he lost the middleweight title in a shocking loss to Sean Strickland. He would then return at UFC 305 and lose to Dricus du Plessis, courtesy of a theoretical plot armor. And lastly, at UFC Fight Night earlier this year, Nassouridine Imavov sniped him cold in the second round.

And now it seems, with Zuckerberg finding himself backstage with Pereira before the main event, the curse has found a new host to latch on to.

Sharing a photo with Pereira backstage before UFC 313, it seems the ‘Zuck curse’ has struck again.

And superfans of Pereira have now called for Zuckerberg to be banned from meeting with fighters before their fights.

“THE MARK ZUCKERBERG CURSE IS REAL.”, a fan said with a rage only magnified by the All-Caps he used.

Another user blamed Pereira for not focussing on his career and added, “When you start getting rented for clout by Mark Zuckerberg your career is over.” 

Meanwhile, this fan was so sure that the ‘Zuck Curse’ was real that he had called for the META CEO to be stopped at the gates before a PPV. “If @AlexPereiraUFC losses MARK ZUCKERBERG SHOULD BE BANNED FROM UFC EVENTS!!!”, he had angrily tweeted.

And can you blame him?

However, it would appear that Zuckerberg was not the only bearer of bad luck for the Brazilian and honestly, for this, nobody else but ‘Poatan’ should take the blame.

Daniel Cormier’s warning came true

A couple of weeks ago, when Pereira was seen hanging out at concerts, shaking hands with the controversial rapper Drake, former UFC champion Daniel Cormier had lost his absolute mind.

In a state of utter disbelief, he had told his Good Guy/Bad Guy co-host that Drake constantly lost millions on fighters he bet on.

“This dude was seen in Australia last week still and he was shaking the hand of Drake. As Drake went on stage for his concert… you kinda don’t want Drake to bet on you.”, DC had said.

Pereira, at the time, had asked DC to chill, posting a video of himself grappling and claiming he was training hard.

Now, DC is above telling people ‘I told you so’ but we aren’t.

He told you so!