Twitter CEO Elon Musk and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg appear to be in the process of organising a real-life fight.
This strange story sprang up on Twitter after Elon Musk replied to a post about Meta’s upcoming Twitter rival, saying of Zuckerberg, “I’m up for a cage match if he is lol.”
I’m up for a cage match if he is lol
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 21, 2023
Zuckerberg took the bait, posting from the comfort of his own platform Instagram, which is owned by Facebook parent company Meta.
“Send me location,” he posted, overlaying the text on a screen grab of Musk’s original conversation on Twitter.
Musk has since tweeted “Vegas Octagon,” a venue for UFC fights in Las Vegas.
Is it real? “The story speaks for itself,” the BBC was told by a Meta spokesperson.
This surreal spat is playing out against a backdrop of a year of massive lay-offs at both the CEOs’ respective companies. Meta fired more than 10,000 employees in March, a move that followed a further 11,000 cut staff in November 2022.
Elon Mush has reportedly cut Twitter’s staff by more than 80% since he took over the platform in October 2022, while ad revenues have dropped by 59%.
The tech giants are playing like content creators, encouraging comparisons to the 2019 fight between YouTubers Logan Paul and KSI.
However, it is not a great surprise Zuckerberg reacted as he did to Elon Musk’s taunt. Zuckerberg regularly talks about his Ju-Jitsu training on Instagram. Six weeks ago, he posted about his “first ju-jitsu tournament,” in which he claims to have won some medals.
Meanwhile, Musk says “I have this great move that I call “The Walrus”, where I just lie on top of my opponent & do nothing.”
Musk is 6ft2, and significantly heavier than the trimmer 5ft7 Zuckerberg.
The original Twitter conversation in which Musk appeared to challenge Zuckerberg was a discussion of Meta’s rumoured Twitter rival. This has not yet been officially announced to the public, but its development was confirmed to the BBC earlier this month.
“We’re exploring a standalone decentralised social network for sharing text updates,” Meta said.
The social network has a development codename of “P92” and could potentially be Twitter’s most serious like-for-like rival, alongside Bluesky, which was founded by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
