August 26 is the date suggested by the creator of Meta. The new owner of Twitter, now called “X”, says that he is training in the office to get in shape for the match
After a time without mentioning the subject, in which common sense seemed to have triumphed, the challenge to a mixed martial arts fight between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg once again has an unusual chance of materializing.
The two tech billionaires agreed in late June to meet in a “cage match.” Zuckerberg is trained in mixed martial arts, and the CEO of Facebook’s parent company Meta posted earlier this year that he had completed his first jiu-jitsu tournament.
A few hours ago he posted on Threads (Meta’s social network that competes with Twitter, owned by Elon Musk): “I’m ready today. I suggested August 26 when he challenged me the first time, but he didn’t confirm. I’m not holding my breath,” he stated, referring to how he doesn’t expect Musk to take the lead. The comment was made by citing a tweet from Musk, in which he says that he is training in his office to improve his physical condition for the match.
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Musk also said that all money raised from the fight will be donated to veteran centers, and will broadcast live.
“The fight between Zuck and Musk will be broadcast live on X,” Musk wrote in a post Sunday on the platform. “All proceeds will go to veterans’ charities.”
It remains to be seen if Musk and Zuckerberg ever meet in Las Vegas, especially since Musk often tweets about premature or missed actions. But even if his cage fighting arrangement is a joke, he has turned heads.
Representatives for X, Meta and Ultimate Fighting Championship, which owns the venue where the bout could take place, did not respond to emails seeking comment.
Musk’s move to broadcast the fight live on X stems from his intention to turn the platform into a “digital plaza.” However, his highly publicized Twitter Spaces launch event in May with the Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis announcing his candidacy for the presidency had technical problems and a delay of almost half an hour.
Musk claimed the problems were due to the “overload” of the servers from the large number of people trying to listen to the audio-only event. But even at its peak, the number of recorded listeners was around 420,000, far from the millions of viewers that televised presidential spots attract.
How we got to this possible fight
To understand how it is possible that two people like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are challenging each other to a hand-to-hand fight, one must understand the following: Musk and Zuckerberg have never gotten along, with a dispute that has been going on for a few years and has always been going on. on the discursive level (before the explosion of ChatGPT and generative artificial intelligence they were already on opposite paths in their assessment of the dangers it implies). But while Zuckerberg tends to keep a low profile, Elon Musk is the king of the Twitter Chicano, so it was only reasonable that their academic discussions would degenerate into something more physical.
When news broke that Zuckerberg’s company Meta was taking advantage of the chaos that the sale of Twitter brought to Elon Musk and was building a similar platform, but tied to Instagram, Musk began making occasional offensive references to the subject. On Tuesday, commenting on a third-party tweet on the matter, he wryly stated: “I’m sure Earth can’t wait to be under Zuck’s thumb with no other options. At least it will be “sensible”. I was worried for a moment.”
The initial challenge
One user responded sarcastically, suggesting that Elon Musk be careful, as Mark Zuckerberg was now doing jiu-jitsu (and CrossFit, before). And it is true: the founder of Facebook, who despite his low profile was always concerned about physical activity, adopted this martial art during the coronavirus pandemic and reached a remarkable level, to the point of winning a gold medal and another months ago. silver in a competition in California.
Musk, neither dull nor lazy, replied: “I’m available for a cage fight if he wants.” The thing probably would have ended there… until Zuckerberg posted, on his Instagram profile, a screenshot of that conversation with a sign that only said “put the place”.
Wrestling and Walruses in Las Vegas
The thing could have ended there. Musk inevitably responded: the Octagon in Las Vegas, a classic wrestling ring from that city. And he added, perhaps to tone it down: “I have this great shot, which I call “The Walrus”, where I lie on top of my opponent and do nothing.”
Is there actually a fight? Musk is 1.87 meters tall, is 52 years old and says that the only exercise he does is lift one of his young children (he has 10, several older ones), but he assures that in his youth in South Africa he participated in several street fights. Zuckerberg is smaller (1.71 meters), younger (39 years old) and in addition to martial arts he did CrossFit. And, as he confirmed to The Vergeis willing to get into a cage type MMA (American wrestling) to fight with who is today the richest man in the world (Zuckerberg is in a not inconsiderable tenth place, according to the list of Forbes which is taken as a reference).
Later, both the mother and father of Elon Musk said publicly that they were opposed to the meeting (which regardless of the final result would damage the image of these two executives), but their position does not seem to have had the expected influence.