The planned cage fight between billionaires Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg has been called off again – this time by Zuckerberg. On Sunday, Zuckerberg made a post on Threads saying that he is giving up on the possibility of such an exhibition match after Musk delayed it once again. Zuckerberg seemed to say that he intended to put his energy into challenges that are more likely to come to fruition.
“I think we can all agree Elon isn’t serious and it’s time to move on,” the Facebook founder wrote. “I offered a real date. [UFC president] 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.”
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Zuckerberg’s post picked up over 74,000 likes and many replies as well on the platform that he created specifically to compete with Musk’s X – formerly known as Twitter. Zuckerberg’s employees at Meta began working on Threads in October of 2022 to compete with Twitter, which seemed vulnerable after Musk’s acquisition. Many commenters seem to think the competition between Threads and X sparked the talk of a fight between the two business leaders.
Musk publicly addressed the idea of a fight with Zuckerberg in June in response to a tweet from a fan. Musk’s athletic background has not been widely reported on but he took photos while training with a Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu instructor later that month. Zuckerberg, meanwhile, took up mixed martial arts in 2022 and became an avid competitor, winning medals at a tournament back in May.
Musk has made some wild claims about this alleged matchup on X and Zuckerberg has accused him of lying. For example, on Aug. 6 Musk posted that he was training for the fight by “lifting weights throughout the day” rather than dedicating specific time to a workout. However, He later wrote that he would need to get surgery on his neck before the fight could take place. He also claimed that he was negotiating to host the fight at the Roman Colosseum, which may or may not have been true according to a report by The Verge.
Musk made some public responses to Zuckerberg on Sunday but only in replies to others’ posts, not direct statements of his own. In one he wrote: “Zuck is a chicken” while in another he wrote: “Can’t wait to bang on his door tomorrow.” So far, Zuckerberg has not responded to these taunts.
