It doesn’t seem like we’ll get to see Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk face off in the ring any time soon.
In June, the two tech bosses proposed a “cage match” against one another. Tension and competition between Musk’s X (formerly known as Twitter) and Zuckerberg’s new app Threads created even more online hype for the two billionaires to battle it out.
But on Sunday, the Meta CEO appeared to have lost faith in Musk’s proposal for the mixed martial arts (MMA) fight.
“I think we can all agree Elon isn’t serious and it’s time to move on,” Zuckerberg, 39, wrote on Threads.
Zuckerberg claimed he offered Musk, 52, a “real date” for the fight. He said Dana White, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) president, offered to make the spectacle “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,” Zuckerberg continued.
On Aug. 6, Musk posted to X that he “may require surgery” on his back before he can fight Zuckerberg.
“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,” concluded Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg, a jiu-jitsu enthusiast, already competes against people who take MMA as seriously as he does. Last month, the Facebook founder said he had obtained his blue belt in the sport. It reportedly takes between one and three years of training to earn a blue belt in jiu-jitsu.
Musk has not responded to Zuckerberg’s call-out.
Last week, however, Musk claimed the fight would take place in Rome, Italy. He said he spoke to Italy’s prime minister and minister of culture, who agreed on an “epic location” for the match.
Two days later, Musk shared a text allegedly from Zuckerberg that suggested the Tesla boss train on his own, then let Zuckerberg know when he was ready to fight.
“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,” the text reads.
Musk replied by suggesting he would win against Zuckerberg because of their size difference — but speculated perhaps Zuckerberg is “a modern day Bruce Lee and will somehow win.”
It seems though that the only place Musk and Zuckerberg may be fighting is in the courtroom. Last month, Twitter sent a cease-and-desist letter over the launch of Threads, which Musk and his team claim is an “unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property.”
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