Zuckerberg ‘Not Holding Breath’ Over Musk Cage Fight

Meta Platforms chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has said he is “not holding his breath” in anticipation of a cage fight with rival billionaire Elon Musk.

Zuckerberg posted the message on his company’s Twitter competitor, Threads, after Musk wrote on Twitter – recently renamed X – that he was “lifting weights throughout the day” to prepare for the fight.

“Don’t have time to work out, so I just bring them to work,” Musk joked.

Zuckerberg, who is trained as a competitive martial artist, said he had proposed 26 August as a date for their fight but Musk “hasn’t confirmed”.

Cage fight

The Meta chief appeared to be taking the prospect of the mixed martial arts fight more seriously than Musk.

“I love this sport and will continue competing with people who train no matter what happens here,” he wrote.

Musk had earlier tweeted that the fight would be broadcast live on X and that any proceeds would go to a “charity for veterans”.

But he also wrote he was having an MRI scan performed on his neck and upper back and “may require surgery before the fight can happen”.

‘Funding secured’

Musk first suggested the cage fight in June, ahead of the July launch of Threads, which made the two entrepreneurs direct competitors.

At the time he made a dig about the world becoming “exclusively under Zuck’s thumb with no other options”.

But it is often difficult to distinguish jokes from serious propositions on Musk’s social media feed, such as in the case of a notorious 2018 post in which he claimed he had “funding secured” to take his electric car company Tesla private.

The deal never happened, and as a result Musk later paid $20 million (£16m) to the US financial regulator, stepped back as Tesla’s chief executive and was required to have his online posts about Tesla reviewed by the company’s legal team.

‘Free speech’ action

Late last week Musk told readers of his feed that the company would fund their legal bills with “no limit” if they were “unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform”.

The post was widely viewed, but Musk – a self-described “free speech absolutist” – offered no further details and it was unclear how users would make claims for assistance to the cash-strapped firm.

X’s parent company recently threatened a UK-based hate speech nonprofit, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), with legal action after the organisation found hate speech was “spreading like wildfire on the platform under Musk’s ownership”.