Mark Zuckerberg tells Elon Musk to get ‘serious’ or the cage fight is off
The cage fight between X/Twitter owner Elon Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg probably won’t go ahead, shocking absolutely nobody.
Zuckerberg took to Threads to question Musk’s commitment to mixed martial arts (MMA) on Sunday, stating that he’s tired of waiting for his potential opponent to agree to a date for their billionaire fistfight. As such, Zuck is moving on with his life, though Musk is welcome to hit him up again if he’s ever ready to actually follow through.
“I think we can all agree Elon isn’t serious and it’s time to move on,” Zuckerberg wrote. “I offered a real date. [President of Ultimate Fighting Championship] Dana White offered to make this a legit competition for charity. Elon won’t confirm a date, then says he needs surgery, and now asks to do a practice round in my backyard instead.
“If Elon ever gets serious about a real date and official event, he knows how to reach me. Otherwise, time to move on. I’m going to focus on competing with people who take the sport seriously.”
Meanwhile, Musk shared screenshots of an apparent text exchange with Zuckerberg, confirming that he did indeed request a practice match at the latter’s house. The texts were first posted by author Walter Isaacson after they were allegedly sent to him by Musk, then later confirmed by the Tesla CEO.
“Wanna do a practice bout at your house next week?” read Musk’s text.
“If you still want to do a real MMA fight, then you should train on your own and let me know when you’re ready to compete,” Zuckerberg responded. “I don’t want to keep hyping something that will never happen, so you should either decide you’re going to do this and do it soon, or we should move on.”
“I will be in Palo Alto on Monday,” replied Musk, brazenly sharing his assassination coordinates. “Let’s fight in your Octagon. I have not been practicing much, apart from a brief bout with [computer scientist and Brazilian jiu jitsu black belt] Lex Fridman today. While I think it is very unlikely, given our size difference, perhaps you are a modern day Bruce Lee and will somehow win.”
In short, it looks like Musk wants a practice run, while Zuckerberg wants Musk to stop wasting his time.
Practice runs aren’t exactly standard in MMA, so Musk’s request for one does seem to undermine his bravado. Of course, Musk doesn’t see it that way, leading his chorus of followers in calling Zuckerberg a “chicken” for not letting the former have a dress rehearsal.
“He can’t eat at chic fil a because that would be cannibalism,” Musk wrote, doing his best impression of a Back to the Future villain.
Zuckerberg hasn’t responded, seemingly content to let Musk continue to Musk far away from him. However, he hasn’t been entirely silent through this whole saga. Last week he responded to a Threads post joking that the fight “will take place on Mars in 2035,” replying with a laughing emoji.
