VANITY FAIR
Mark Zuckerberg is losing patience with Elon Musk, well, more so than usual, it seems. According to the screenshot of a text exchange reportedly between the X owner and Facebook founder, Zuckerberg gave Musk an ultimatum regarding the cage match Musk proposed in June. Musk took the bait, proposing a showdown in California on Monday.
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.
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As the summer went on, Musk continued to publicly goad Zuckerberg, even challenging him to a “literal dick measuring contest.” Meanwhile, Zuckerberg seemed to lose faith that the matchup would ever happen, telling staffers last month, “I don’t know. I don’t have any kind of official update on this … I’m not sure if it’s going to come together.”
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.”
“This all came as a surprise to Mark Zuckerberg,” Platformer reported at the time. “Behind the scenes, the billionaire’s teams had been negotiating for weeks to nail down details of the fight,” and Zuckerberg’s camp had already proposed the two meet in the ring on August 26.
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.
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“Wanna do a practice bout at your house next week?” Musk apparently asked Zuckerberg. The Facebook founder’s response was polite, but brutal in its simplicity.
“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,” he said. “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.”
Backed into a corner, Musk replied, “I will be in Palo Alto Monday. Let’s fight in your octagon.”
Zuckerberg responded on his social network, Threads, again mincing no words. “I think we can all agree Elon isn’t serious and it’s time to move on.”
As Zuckerberg alludes, multitudes of Musk’s announcements, promises, and proposals never come to fruition. In this case, perhaps we all should—as Zuck says—move on, and keep in mind that these type of shenanigans seem like the rule with Musk, not the exception.
