“Who would win in a fight?” is a classic thought experiment traditionally played among fans as they pit their favorite fictional characters from different universes against each other. Who would win in a fight between Neo and John Wick? Who would win in a fight between Thor and Wonder Woman? These are jokes not meant to be taken seriously. And yet, it seems the question may play out in reality among a couple of tech billionaires. Who would win in a fight between Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk? We may learn the answer in the middle of a UFC Octagon.
This week has been wild as what initially seemed to be nothing more than an attempt at posturing by Musk now appears to be looking more and more like we could see a sanctioned fight between him and META CEO Mark Zuckerberg. It all started when it was reported that META was working on a competitor to Twitter, which resulted in Musk insulting Zuckerberg, and then challenging him to a “cage fight” if he took offense. Zuckerberg responded with “send me location,” to which Musk then in turn sent a location, a UFC Octagon in Las Vegas.
It would be easy to still just chalk this up to a couple of super-rich people trying to look tough, but now UFC President Dana White has told TMZ that he has spoken directly to both men and neither one is joking around. White explained...
I was talking to both Elon and Mark last night. Both guys are absolutely dead serious about this. Because they both said, 'Yeah, we'll do it.' They both want to do it. Mark Zuckerberg hit me up, first sentence, 'Is he serious?' I said, 'I don't know, let me ask him.' I asked him, he said, 'Yeah, I'm dead serious.'
So is this actually happening? While White isn’t saying for certain that it is going down, he says he’s taking it very seriously and it sounds like the first steps toward making it a reality are happening. White thinks this would be the biggest PPV fight in history, outdoing the Mayweather/McGregor battle from 2017, raising hundreds of millions of dollars. One piece of good news is that whatever money raised is apparently already set to go to charity, but the fact that both men are talking about what to do with the money does indicate that they are seriously considering all this.
As far as what sort of a fight it would be, it might be better than we expect. Zuckerberg has been studying ju-jitsu, and Musk apparently has also studied martial arts, and claims he got in a lot of fights growing up in South Africa, so while the fight certainly wouldn’t be what UFC fans are used to seeing, it might be a case of putting two fairly evenly matched amateurs in the ring together, which could still make for a solid battle.
As far as when Zuckerberg v. Musk: Billionaire Brawl might happen, that’s one question White wasn’t ready to answer. It’s unclear how much training time the two would need, so whether this is a late 2023 fight or early 2024 one, we’ll have to wait and see. And of course, until deals are signed this whole thing could still fall apart, but right now, we can’t count this one out.
