Mark Zuckerberg’s sparring partner wins in Taipei

Khai Wu is best known for being Mark Zukerberg’s sparring partner. The Facebook founder first revealed himself to be an aspiring mixed martial artist when wishing the Taiwanese fighter luck with an upcoming fight.

Despite having one of the world’s richest men on his team Khai came up short on that occasion. But he got back to winning ways in Taipei last weekend with a split decision win over a Filipino opponent.

Big news

The victory takes his record to 7-4 and snaps a two fight losing streak. He has now won five fights out of five competing for Taiwanese promotion Way of the Dragon.

Khai’s form in the US has been more mixed with all four of his losses coming on fight cards there. But he has achieved more fame for his exploits outside of the cage.

Zuckerberg decided to release some footage of the two men sparring prior to Khai’s fight with Joshua Dillon in November. Anything the billionaire does is big news and so this made headlines all over the world.

Angry racist

Khai also won a lot of fans from outside the world of MMA when footage emerged of him talking down an angry racist. The mixed martial artist would have been well equipped to use violence to deal with the man but instead decided to try and calm him down by engaging him in conversation.

Zuckerberg recently released some footage of him training with UFC featherweight champion Alex Volkanovski. State of the art sensors and cameras were used so that people could see the two celebrities sparring in the metaverse.

Khai, who is based permanently in California, appears to be one of the billionaire’s regular sparring partners. Having made his amateur debut all the way back in 2016 he has been in the game a long time.

The publicity that was generated by his sparring session with Zuckerberg and the confrontation with the angry racist has been almost unambiguously positive. But Khai will be happy to get back to the daily business of being a professional mixed martial artist with his first win since 2020.