Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says he is moving on from the cage fight, as Tesla founder Elon Musk ‘is not serious’.
The highly anticipated cage fight between the two business magnates was expected to be held on as early as Monday, as suggested by Musk on his own messaging site X, formerly known as Twitter.
Elon Musk “isn’t serious” about holding a cage fight and “it’s time to move on”, said Zuckerberg, in a post on his own social media site Threads.
The Meta boss said he had offered Musk “a real date” but the rival entrepreneur had made excuses.
The billionaires’ June agreement to the fight garnered a lot of media attention. The opponents have been encouraging one another for months, but they have yet to set a date, casting doubt on whether the bout will actually take place, reported BBC.
The competitor messaging app to X, Threads, debuted in July and attracted more than 100 million sign-ups in less than a week, complicating the verbal battle between the two business rivals.
That number has fallen back, and X remains comfortably ahead with around 350 million users but Musk has threatened to sue Facebook for “unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets”. However, Meta denies the claims.
Last week, Zuckerberg said he had proposed 26 August for the cage fight. Then in a twist on Friday, Italy’s culture minister said that he had spoken to Musk about hosting the showdown in the country as a charity event.
Musk suggested it would have “an ancient Rome theme”.
On Sunday, however, the Meta boss posted on Threads: “Elon won’t confirm a date, then says he needs surgery, and now asks to do a practice round in my backyard instead.”
“If Elon ever gets serious about a real date and official event, he knows how to reach me. Otherwise, time to move on. I’m going to focus on competing with people who take the sport seriously.”
Responding on X, however, Musk called the Meta boss a “chicken”.
Earlier, Musk had uploaded an alleged text message interaction between himself and Zuckerberg on the messaging app.
He mentions that he will be in Palo Alto, where Meta’s headquarters are located, and that the battle might take place in Zuckerberg’s Octagon, the eight-sided ring where cage fights are staged.
Musk continued: “I have not been practicing much, apart from a brief bout with Lex Fridman [the computer scientist and podcast host] today.
“While I think it is very unlikely, given our size difference, perhaps you are a modern day Bruce Lee and will somehow win.”
Musk, 52, and Zuckerberg, 39 are two of the world’s most high-profile technology billionaires. The bizarre idea to fight each other started in June when Musk tweeted that he was “up for a cage fight” with Zuckerberg.
The Meta boss, who already has mixed martial arts (MMA) training and has recently won jiu-jitsu tournaments, simply responded with “send me location”.