The long-hyped possibility of a cage match between tech titans Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk appears to be no more, after Zuckerberg dismissed Musk for allegedly delaying their anticipated showdown in the ring, NBC News reported.
“I think we can all agree Elon isn’t serious and it’s time to move on,” the Facebook co-founder wrote Sunday in a post on Threads, the text-based app Meta launched as a competitor to X, the company formerly known as Twitter.
The social media executives have been teasing the possibility of a mixed martial arts fight since June, calling it a “cage match,” an informal term referring to wrestling in a closed-in space that combatants aim to escape from.
But in his latest comments on the matter, Zuckerberg said that while he was ready to fight, Musk kept coming up with reasons he couldn’t.
Vanity Fair reported that it’s been a roller coaster of braggadocio since Musk first tweeted that he’d happily fight Zuckerberg, whose Instagram is peppered with posts about his rigorous martial arts training. The 38-year-old discovered Brazilian jiu-jitsu during the pandemic, ESPN reports, and participated in his first tournament in May while competing at 149 lbs.
Musk, who is 52 years old, initially proposed that the two meet at an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) venue in Las Vegas but admitted that he needed “a lot more training” to meet Zuck in the octagon.
According to Vanity Fair, last week, Musk announced that the matchup would be live-streamed on X (formerly Twitter), the social network Musk purchased for $44 billion last October. “All proceeds will go to charity for veterans.”
Shortly thereafter, Musk announced a litany of reasons why he couldn’t fight Zuckerberg then, including that he might need surgery to fix an unspecified issue with his neck and back. But a text exchange between Musk and Zuckerberg, which Musk sent to biographer Walter Isaacson on Sunday, suggests that those concerns might have fallen by the wayside.
The Verge reported that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Threads post today that “it’s time to move on” from Elon Musk’s cage fight antics; “We can all agree Elon isn’t serious,” he wrote, adding that the refusal of the X (formerly known as Twitter) owner to confirm a date and his offer to “do a practice round in my backyard instead” shows how unserious he is.
According to The Verge, the two CEO’s agreed in June to have the cage match. The whole idea seemed potentially entertaining on its face, but has instead been exhausting to follow as Musk makes unsubstantiated claims, including about where the fight will happen and who will benefit from it, only to kick the can down the road with a surgery announcement when his bluff is called.
Personally, I think that Zuckerberg was quite serious about engaging in a cage match against Elon Musk. It is clear that Zuckerberg has realized that Elon is not actually interested in fighting Zuckerberg. A person who honestly wants to fight Zuckerberg wouldn’t be making up a bunch of excuses that are intended to postpone the match indefinitely.