.gif)
Standing in this corner, coming in at 6 foot 1, 200 pounds. The Pride of Pretoria. The Man With a Million Titles. Twitter owner Elooooooon Musk!
And in this corner, coming in at 5 foot 6, 155 pounds. The Master of the Metaverse. The Harvard Haymaker. Meta CEO Maaaaark Zuckerberg!
What happened: Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have agreed to a cage fight. No, this isn’t a story from an abandoned April Fool’s edition, but somehow the actual reality we’re living in.
Catch-up: It all started with Musk taking to the internet to criticize Zuck, tweeting out “I’m up for a cage match if he is lol.” Zuck fired back by re-posting the tweet with the caption “SEND ME LOCATION.” Musk’s answer: Vegas Octagon (aka, the UFC’s Apex Arena).
They’re not actually gonna fight… are they? Zuckerberg seems pretty serious about it. The Verge confirmed his challenge was not a joke, with a Meta spokesperson saying “The story speaks for itself.” He’s also been training in Jiu-Jitsu and actually winning tournaments.
- Musk seems less serious and has broken promises before—remember the Hyperloop? That said, he commits to trolling and claims he was part of brawls as a youth in South Africa.
Why it matters: This brawl would be the physical manifestation of Twitter and Meta’s beef. Musk and Zuck have a looong history of hater behaviour towards each other. This personal distaste turned profesh when Instagram announced it was rolling out a Twitter competitor.
- The app, codenamed Project 92, will offer a “sanely run” platform for people looking to share their thoughts. Zuck also recently said Twitter should have way more users.
Zoom out: Twitter has other problems besides a new microblogging foe. It’s missing rent payments and facing a fresh lawsuit claiming it failed to pay millions in promised bonuses.
Our prediction: This fight probably won’t happen. But if it does, we’ve got the younger, clearly-in-better-shape Zuck taking it (despite the size disadvantage).—QH