Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, two of the world’s best-known billionaire,s who have made their fortunes through the development of advanced technology, have crossed the line of verbal jabs at each other and are preparing to have a real sporting duel. If this is not another joke of the tycoons, they are expected to fight each other in a traditional mixed martial arts fighting cage. The West World is already in anticipation, millions of people want to see a physical confrontation between the owners of the technology of the future.
The instigator of the spat was Elon Musk, known for his unpredictable behaviour and scandalous nature. Today on Twitter, which he owns, Musk mocked Mark Zuckerberg’s company Meta, which plans to launch its own “intelligently managed” microblogging.
“I’m sure Earth can’t wait to be solely under Zuck’s thumb without any other options,” Elon Musk wrote wryly . “At the very least, it will be ‘okay’.” And then the entrepreneur added: “I’m ready for a cage match if he’s laughing.
Zuckerberg was not slow to respond. He wrote the message, of course, on his resource, Instagram (which is owned by Meta). Mark was succinct – underneath a screenshot of Musk’s message was the caption – “Send me the location”. The owner of Tesla, Space X and Twitter didn’t back down and called the location “Vegas Octagon”. The Octagon is the name of a special fenced-in arena, where fights are staged by the Ultimate Fighting Championship organisation.
This correspondence between the billionaires sparked a flurry of emotions, speculation and memes from users of both social media platforms. Of course, the physical fitness of the two would-be wrestlers came under the spotlight. Elon Musk is clearly superior to Zuckerberg in the strength category. In addition, he has said, that he was involved in “real violent street fights” growing up in South Africa. However, he is 12 years older than Mark. In addition, Musk has repeatedly admitted, that he doesn’t devote much time to sports training.
“I hardly ever train, except occasionally picking up my children and tossing them in the air.” However, he says he has one win-win technique in store. “I have a great technique in store, which I call ‘walrus’: I just lie on my opponent and do nothing.”
But lying down on Zuckerberg might not be so easy either. The Meta CEO has been known to practice the Brazilian sport of jiu-jitsu. A month ago he won his first local tournament in California. And unlike Musk, he is serious about a possible fight. A spokesman for his company confirmed this.
The latest conflict of technical geniuses came after Zuckerberg’s Meta announced plans in June to create a text-based social network to compete with Twitter. The idea is that users of Meta-owned Instagram could immediately become subscribers to the same accounts on the new text-based social network as well. This could potentially allow the company to attract subscribers from decentralised platforms and seriously compete with Musk’s Twitter.
Zuckerberg and Musk have clashed before. In 2017, they staged a public feud over the future of artificial intelligence. Musk has repeatedly warned of the dangers of AI, describing it as a potentially existential threat to humanity. Zuckerberg, for his part, was much more optimistic.
If you measure opponents by their monetary value, Musk is clearly stronger. He displaced Zuckerberg from third place in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index in 2020, and soon after became the richest man in the world. Mark is now in 10th position.
Clearly, a possible fight between Musk and Zuckerberg could be one of the most watched fights of all time.
Earlier, Musk challenged Vladimir Putin to a “fight for Ukraine”. The billionaire suggested, that the aggressor country’s president should go head-to-head, the stakes high – “the whole of Ukraine”. For obvious reasons, the challenge went unanswered at the time.
