Zuckerberg Says Elon Musk ‘Not Serious’ About Cage Fight

Mark Zuckerberg has said Elon Musk is “not serious”, after the Tesla CEO further delayed his cage fight showdown.

The CEO and founder of Meta Platforms said as a result, he is moving on from a touted cage fight with Elon Musk, after he had failed to name a date.

It comes Zuckerberg said last week that he was “not holding his breath” in anticipation of a cage fight with Musk.

Musk delays

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

Zuckerberg is practitioner of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and in May won gold and silver in two featherweight white belt categories at a California martial arts tournament.

Because of his expertise and training, most experts predicted that Zuckerberg would beat Musk, despite the Tesla CEO being larger than Zuckerberg.

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

He posted on X that he was “lifting weights throughout the day” to prepare for the fight.

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

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

But Musk seems to have listened to the advice of his mother, Maye Musk, who in June had tweeted that her son and Zuckerberg should “fight with words only” instead of engaging in fisticuffs.

Last week Musk floated the idea of having a “noble” debate with Zuckerberg instead of punching each other. It came after TED curator Chris Anderson proposed having a “cage match DEBATE” between the two billionaires.

“Here’s a better idea: a cage match DEBATE ‘How to Build an Amazing Future,’” Anderson had tweeted on Tuesday.

Musk appeared to agree with the suggestion, tweeting that a debate “sounds like a good idea too.”

Walking away

But now it seems that Zuckerberg has lost patience and opted to walk away.

“I think we can all agree Elon isn’t serious and it’s time to move on,” Zuckerberg posted on Threads. “I offered a real date. 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,” said Zuckerberg.

If Elon ever gets serious about a real date and official event, he knows how to reach me,” said Zuckerberg. “Otherwise, time to move on. I’m going to focus on competing with people who take the sport seriously.”

Tech tensions

Tensions between the two tech billionaires flared into the open after the launch of Threads in July.

X Corp’s lawyer Alex Spiro threatened to sue Meta in a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, accusing Meta of the “wilful” misappropriation of trade secrets.

In the letter, Spiro alleged that Meta’s Threads was built by former Twitter employees “deliberately assigned” to develop a “copycat” app.

However Meta has been developing Threads since August 2019.

And Spiro offered no concrete examples of Twitter employees using trade secrets to build the app, and Meta has insisted that no Threads engineers are former Twitter staff.

“No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee,” Andy Stone, Meta communications director, posted on Threads. “That’s just not a thing.”

Musk and Zuckerberg are the second and 16th richest people on the planet, respectively, according to Forbes’ most recent list of billionaires.