2023-07-03 07:00:00
Talks regarding an exhibition bout, a ‘cage fight’, between tech billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk have progressed and the parameters of the event are being defined. (Nick Little/The New York Times)
In June, the day following Elon Musk challenged Mark Zuckerberg on social media to “a cage fight,” Dana White, president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), received a text message.
It was from Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, who asked White, director of the world’s largest mixed martial arts competition—fought in cage-like octagons—if Musk was serious regarding the fight.
White called Musk, who runs Tesla, Twitter and SpaceX, and confirmed that he was willing to fight. White then relayed that to Zuckerberg. In response, Zuckerberg posted on Instagram: “Send me location,” a reference to the catchphrase of Khabib Nurmagomedov, one of the UFC’s most decorated athletes.
Since then, White said, he has spoken every night with the separate tech billionaires to organize the showdown. He claimed that on Tuesday he was in a telephone conversation “until 12:45 am with those two and they both want to do it.”
If you thought a cage fight between two of the richest men in the world was just a crazy publicity stunt for social media, think once more.
White said that over the past 10 days he, Musk and Zuckerberg, with the help of advisors, have negotiated behind the scenes and are inching toward physical combat.. While there are no guarantees the fight will take place, the general conditions of the event are being worked out, White and three people with knowledge of the talks said.
White noted that the fight would be an exhibition fight and would fall outside the UFC’s rights agreements and official jurisdiction, although he would help produce the event. White and a person familiar with the conversations indicated that tech leaders agreed that a philanthropy component should be included, and details are still being worked out. Their preferred location would be Las Vegas, where approval from the Nevada Athletic Commission is required. On Thursday, Musk tweeted that the event might also happen at the Roman Colosseum.
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Zuckerberg’s friends and advisers have generally supported the fight, two people close to him said, although others said a fight would be a distraction and not the best use of their time. A person close to Musk said that although he hated sports and didn’t seem to have the discipline to train regularly, nothing might be ruled out with him.
(COMBO/FILES) Elon Musk y Mark Zuckerberg. (Mandel NGAN and Alain JOCARD / AFP) (MANDEL NGAN, ALAIN JOCARD/AFP via Getty Images)
If the confrontation between Musk, 52, and Zuckerberg, 39keep going, it would be an unusual spectacle, even in the brag-filled universe of the tech industry. Although Steve Jobs and Bill Gates often attacked each other, the closest the tech world had had to real sports disputes before this was between billionaire yachting enthusiasts like Oracle’s Larry Ellison and SAP’s Hasso Plattner.
But two billionaire tech titans fighting, punching and kicking each other in a stadium in Las Vegas or Rome? Nobody would have dreamed it.
Meta declined to comment. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
For a long time, Zuckerberg and Musk have vacillated between being competitors, frenemies and outright enemies. The two have criticized each other over the years over incidents with Musk’s SpaceX rockets, data privacy scandals at Meta, and more. Recently, Zuckerberg sent a team at Meta to create a competitor to Musk’s Twitter, codenamed Project 92.
If they take their rivalry beyond that teasing, White said he is concerned regarding the physical differences between billionaires. In addition to their 13-year age difference, Musk is said to weigh at least 31 kilograms more than Zuckerberg. In official MMA fights, opponents are generally matched by weight.
“We have two guys who have never fought professionally and they are in two completely different weight classes,” White said. However, “it will be the biggest fight in the history of combat sports,” he said.
Zuckerberg is especially familiar with the world of UFC. Over the past 18 months, he has embarked on a personal journey to gain muscle mass and delved into Brazilian jiu-jitsu, a grappling martial art in which competitors attempt to subdue their opponent and is used in wrestling matches. UFC.
In 2021, Zuckerberg began training for fun, mostly in his garage, where he built what he called a “mini-academy” with a circle of friends who train with him. He said he appreciated that Brazilian jiu-jitsu required “100 percent concentration” and strategic thinking to defeat an opponent rather than brute force.
Zuckerberg has sought guidance from martial arts experts, including Dave Camarillo, James Terry and Khai Wu. In May, he competed in his first public martial arts tournament in Redwood City, California, which he attended undercover until he took off his hat and sunglasses to fight. He won gold and silver medals in the competition.
Musk, on the other hand, tweeted that he “almost never” exercises and once suffered a back injury that required surgery following participating in an exhibition with a sumo wrestler. Last month, he said he had trained in “judo, Kyokushin (or full contact),” two Japanese martial arts, and “street fighting without rules.”
“Musk made it very clear: ‘I’m not going to lose weight,’” White said of Musk’s strategy for the potential showdown. And he says that he also asked him: “Are we going to fight or are we not going to fight?”
c.2023 The New York Times Company
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