Well, here’s a twist in the Musk v Zuck fight that I didn’t have on my bingo card. To recap, back in June, Elon Musk was X-ing with his Blue Check Bros and having a hissy fit about Meta’s new social media platform, Threads, which was introduced to rival Twitter X. Macho Man Mush ended up challenging Mark Zuckerberg to a cage match. Zuck responded on Threads with, “Send me location.” [Side note – what’s the correct verbage for using Threads? Threading?]
Anyway, the cage match was supposed to be live-streamed from Vegas and raise money for charity. The billionaires were arguing over what platform it should stream on, with Zuck making the deliciously petty argument against streaming it on Twitter X, saying, “Shouldn’t we use a more reliable platform that can actually raise money for charity?” LMAO. Zuck, who loves jiu-jitsu so much that he built an octagon in his backyard, also threw out August 26 as a proposed date, causing Musk to suddenly reveal that the fight may have to be delayed a few months because he might need shoulder surgery. Well, now we can add “my dog ate my passport” to the list of Elon’s potential excuses because apparently, he wants to live out his Gladiator fantasy and take their fight to Italy. Mamma mia!
Elon Musk is in talks with Italy’s government about hosting his proposed cage fight with Mark Zuckerberg at a historic site in the country, but the Colosseum has been ruled out as a venue.
The Italian culture minister, Gennaro Sangiuliano, said he was discussing holding the bout “in full respect of the sites” where it might be staged, but that it would not be held in Rome.
“I had a long and friendly phone conversation with Elon Musk,” he said. “We talked about the common passion for the history of ancient Rome. We are discussing how to organise a great charity and historical evocation event, in full respect of the sites. It will not be held in Rome.”
Zuckerberg responded on Threads: “I love this sport and I’ve been ready to fight since the day Elon challenged me. If he ever agrees on an actual date, you’ll hear it from me. Until then, please assume anything he says has not been agreed on.”
This week the president of the cage-fighting promotion company Ultimate Fighting Championship, Dana White, said he had spoken to the culture ministry about staging the fight between the two billionaires in the Colosseum.
Musk added to the speculation on Friday when he posted on Twitter, now renamed as X, that the fight would be livestreamed on his and Zuckerberg’s social media networks, saying: “Everything in camera frame will be ancient Rome, so nothing modern at all.”He said he had spoken to the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, and the culture minister and had “agreed on an epic location”. Earlier on Friday, Musk had posted the word “gladiators” next to two crossed-sword emojis.
However, Sangiuliano then issued the statement ruling out Rome. From the north to the south, Italy is home to hundreds of ancient Roman and Greek sites, including the Capua amphitheatre and the ruins of the disaster-struck city Pompeii, near Naples; the ancient Greek temples in Agrigento, in Sicily; and the arena of Verona, completed in AD30, which is still used for opera, concerts and other events.
Musk posted on X that the fight would be managed by his and Zuckerberg’s charitable donations, not UFC, and that all proceeds would go to military veterans’ organisations. Sangiuliano said in his statement that any location deal would include a donation worth “many millions of euros” to two Italian paediatric hospitals.
However, Musk also indicated that any fight was not imminent. He had previously posted on X that he had a shoulder problem requiring minor surgery with a recovery period of “a few months”.
Zuckerberg wrote on Sunday that he was “not holding his breath” over the mooted fight, as he revealed that he had suggested a date of 26 August for the contest. That now seems unlikely given Musk’s post about surgery.
The chief executive of X, Linda Yaccarino, also questioned the seriousness of Musk and Zuckerberg’s plans, saying this week that talk of a bout “may be a humorous back and forth between Zuck and Musk”. She also jokingly described the fight as a “great brand sponsorship opportunity”.
I love that even Twitter X’s chief executive is rolling her eyes at this nonsense. Because it’s such nonsense. Why is he wasting Italian officials’ time? Doesn’t he have multiple companies to run? Don’t they have a country to run? I’m surprised he hasn’t brought SpaceX into this and proposed that they become the first billionaires to fight in outer space. We all know that the King of the Blue Check Bros just likes the attention and has no actual intentions of fighting Lizard Boy. He has to know that he won’t win. I kinda expect that at some point, he’ll say his shoulder boo boo hurts too much and propose that they pick their best fighters to sub in for them.
It’s also hilarious that even Zuckerberg seems over it. After that, he Threaded that Elon isn’t serious (what gave him that impression?) and that it’s time to move on.
I think we can all agree Elon isn’t serious and it’s time to move on. I offered a real date. Dana White offered to make this a legit competition for charity. 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.
Zuck’s got better things to do, y’all. He just wants to play in his octagon, eat his McNuggets, and sell users’ data in peace! We may be entertained, but he does not need to indulge your Maximus fantasies.
Photos via Instagram and credit Avalon.red
I cannot roll my eyes hard enough at these two douchebros.
What a couple of knobs.
Two of the richest people in the world are not required to care about humanity or use their resources to solve world hunger and climate change. And other ways to simp for billionaires and pretend any of this is okay.
Agreed! These two dudes are a joke.
I hate so much that Musk is making me root for Zuckerberg somewhat.
Maida, THIS! I’m def no fan of Zuckerberg but Elon is an evil idiot.
Elon is absolutely stalling and/or buying time. This shoulder “injury” smacks of someone who realizes he’s out of his element and would lose in a major way. Is he looking for more time so he can get in better fighting shape, or just to let it putter out?
Putter out. It’s his version of the orange clown’s heal spurs
Please let’s pray that there’s not someone up for this in the Italian government and they let Muskrat use some Roman amphitheatre that will be at the mercy of his fan boys 😕
Yeah, this “let’s have this in Italy” nonsense made me think of that recent Travis Scott show at Circus Maximus which caused measurable seismic activity… just what you DON’T want in Rome, a city filled with historically important buildings and ruins. People were rightfully upset.
And also the scenes in Get Back where the ego-tastic filmmaker really really wanted the Beatles to play a massive concert at an ancient site in Tripoli, because he loved the idea of the visual, and they were all like ‘nah’, Michael, we’re not going to be doing that … let’s just do it on a lawn somewhere in London”. They famously wound up just going on the roof, instead
Hey, ego-bros, the world doesn’t exist solely to be a backdrop for your nonsense
Only Musk could make me root for Zuckerberg.
Seriously.
Elon is batsh!t. The Colosseum? Is he out of his mind?
On the other hand, is Mark here under the impression that people think of *him* as a serious person?
Elno is the textbook definition of your mouth writing checks your @55 can’t cash. I would enjoy seeing a photo of him getting Zuck’s foot to his face used for years as the post headers, although his Halloween cockroach costume is always a classic.
When envisioning the Zuck/Musk match, anyone else envision Stanley/Jim sumo wrestling from the Beach Games episode of The Office?
Now I am 😂
What fuckin timeline did I slip into? Wtf is this? How is this reality?
Also, Zuckerberg out here like “lol Musk isn’t serious about world domination like I am!”
I hate these people
@Sass it really does read like an Onion article. Bonkers, all of it.
Picking a shoulder injury as an excuse? No one wants to fight with any injury. But there is currently a well known, highly successful celebrity who danced for 10 years with a shoulder injury that no one knew he had. Until the pandemic, when he finally agreed there was enough down time to get surgery. There are so many performers, athletes, military, first responders, ordinary people, who have continued through injury or illness.
Not only is that a lame excuse, but specifically a shoulder injury? He had to pick that one.
Didn’t this already happen? Monica’s wealthy boyfriend? Pete Decker? Seriously, this is where we’re at? An episode of Friends predicted this?
Ahahaha, you’re right! Didn’t Jon Favreau play him? I’d forgotten about that. Lmao
Those pictures of Zuck shirtless with hiiBJJ buddies makes me chuckle.
I can totally picture him thinking “Who’s the Chad now?”
People really still use the term “Chad”? Unironically? OK.
Poor Italy. That’s all I’ve got.
I detest both of them. And yet this is hilarious.
To be fair to Zuck, he did create (or helped create) something huge without the benefit of having an immensely wealthy father. There’s a spark in that brain. Unless, that is, he really DID steal it from the Winkelvoss twins?
“If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you would have invented Facebook!” has morphed into “If you wanted to beat me in a cage match, you would have beaten me in a cage match!”
Life imitates art.
so tired of global focus on two people acting like 13 year old boys sh*t-talking on the schoolbus. Yes, Zuckerberg, let’s all move on. I miss the days when CEOs of tech companies stayed in their offices and took actual work meetings and did tech company CEO stuff and you never even knew what they looked like.
It appears Elno (typo and it stays) has torn a page from his big fat lying orange idol’s book – just tell some lies, then tell some more lies, and then when somebody asks you about it, lie about something else.
Push comes to shove, they’ll get it all set for next summer in Italy and he’ll tell us Etna’s erupting or his mother needs an organ donation or something.
But push won’t come to shove. Zuck gets this one, no question.
Elongated Muskrat is such a clown, he makes a dead-eyed super-villain like Mark Zuckerberg look good in comparison.
(To be fair, I think Zuckerberg has always been capable and adult, and Musk never has been. This is an unsurprising ending.)
I agree. They both suck, but Zuckerberg is more evil smart versus Musk is just a lucky idiot.
Every time I her about this thing with a Musk and Zuckerberg, I assumed it was all from a parody account. Talk about toxic masculinity.
I was hoping they’d get into the ring and kill each other.
This is all distraction so we will forget Twitter’s worsen policies. That social media was bad before but now it’s worse..