Despite repeatedly describing himself as a defender of comedy, Elon Musk famously isn’t all that good at actually being funny. This is why we think, but we can’t be sure, that he was joking when he claimed he would fight fellow billionaire Mark Zuckerberg in a cage match and then named the place he’d do it: “Vegas Octagon,” came the tweet on Wednesday night.
But if he’s not joking, then at some point, maybe (?), Musk and Zuckerberg will apparently beat each other up in Las Vegas’s UFC Apex arena, known as the Octagon. Which, sure, ok.
First, let’s back up because this whole thing is a lot. Earlier Thursday, responding to a report that Facebook parent company Meta is working on some kind of Twitter competitor, one of Musk’s fanboys joked about Zuckerberg’s interest in martial arts. In response, Musk declared, “I’m up for a cage match if he is lol.”
Later in the day, Zuckerberg responded in an Instagram story with a simple message to Musk: “Send Me the Location.”
Of course, the snake has to eventually swallow its own tail, and so it is that on Thursday night, Musk accepted — again, we think this is probably all a joke — Zuckerberg’s terms and picked Las Vegas.
So to repeat. Two of the wealthiest men in human history are at least pretending like they’re going to engage in actual physical combat sports against one another as part of a rivalry over social media platforms.
This exchange between the two tech billionaires comes less than a day after Musk, in yet another example of his increasingly outspoken negative views of trans people, declared the terms “cis” and “cisgender” to slur per Twitter’s terms of service.