Thursday TMZthe most popular celebrity gossip and news site in the United States, has released an article in which he claimed that the Italian culture ministry had proposed to Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, respectively owners of Twitter and Meta, to use the Colosseum as the site of the fight that the two had “promised” to each other last week. TMZ he cites his “informed” sources.
TMZ he is known for his gossip scoops but also for his ethically questionable journalistic choices and a little attention to standards of accuracy: the Italian Ministry of Culture has on Friday morning denied the alleged offer of the Colosseum by responding to requests for explanations from various newspapers. In the meantime though Elon Musk he wrote a tweet in which he seemed to at least partially confirm the thing: “There is some possibility that the fight will take place in the Colosseum,” he said.
Some chance fight happens in Colosseum
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 30, 2023
It’s unclear whether Musk was merely joking, nor is it clear how seriously his and Zuckerberg’s statements about the fight last week were to be taken. However, the fact that both have experience in fighting sports – Musk in MMA, Zuckerberg in jiu jitsu – had prompted many to at least ask themselves the doubt, and a well-informed newspaper on the world of technology companies such as The Verge he had confirmed that at least Zuckerberg wasn’t joking.
The whole story has to do with the fact that Musk has been mocking Zuckerberg on Twitter since new details were revealed on June 8 about the “rival of Twitter” platform that Meta has been working on for months, which should be called Threads.
The first proposal for a “fight” had actually arrived when Musk had responded to an article that spoke precisely of this platform, writing: “I’m ready to fight, if he’s on it too” (“I’m up for a cage match if he is lol», where “cage match” are the encounters in cages typical of mixed martial arts, MMA). Zuckerberg had replied in his stories on Instagram with a simple: “Tell me where”.