The long-hyped possibility of a cage match between tech titans Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk appears to be no more after Zuckerberg dismissed Musk for allegedly delaying their anticipated showdown in the ring.
"I think we can all agree Elon isn’t serious and it’s time to move on," Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook, wrote Sunday on Threads, the text-based app Meta launched as a competitor to X, the company formerly known as Twitter.
The social media executives have been teasing the possibility of a mixed martial arts fight since June, calling it a "cage match," an informal term referring to wrestling in a closed-in space that combatants aim to escape from.
But in his latest comments, Zuckerberg said that while he was ready to fight, Musk kept coming up with reasons he couldn't.
"I offered a real date. Dana White offered to make this a legit competition for charity," Zuckerberg wrote, referring to the president of the Las Vegas-based company Ultimate Fighting Championship, who The New York Times has reported was trying to organize the fight.
"Elon won’t confirm a date, then says he needs surgery, and now asks to do a practice round in my backyard instead," Zuckerberg continued. Musk previously claimed he may need surgery before he fights his rival.
"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," Zuckerberg concluded.
Musk has not yet publicly responded to Zuckerberg's latest comments, and a spokesperson for X could not immediately be reached for comment.
Earlier Sunday, Musk tweeted what he claimed was a screenshot of a text conversation with Zuckerberg in which Musk appeared to suggest they meet for "a practice bout" Monday in the backyard of Zuckerberg's home in Palo Alto, California, where he previously claimed to have built an Octagon, a UFC-branded ring, TMZ reported this month.
Their rivalry intensified when Zuckerberg rolled out Threads last month in a bid to compete with X. An attorney for Musk subsequently sent a letter accusing Meta of misappropriating X's trade secrets and hiring ex-Twitter employees to make Threads.
“I’m sure Earth can’t wait to be exclusively under Zuck’s thumb with no other options,” Musk tweeted ahead of the Threads rollout.
Shortly thereafter, in responding to an X user who joked about Zuckerberg’s being trained in the Brazilian combat sport of jiujitsu, Musk responded, “I’m up for a cage match if he is lol.”
Meta’s communications director, Andy Stone, responded to reports of the letter from Musk's attorney, saying on Threads, “No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that’s just not a thing.”
Musk and Zuckerberg are the second and 16th richest people on the planet, respectively, according to Forbes' most recent list of billionaires.
Elon Musk on Sunday leaked a series of messages that he says are a text exchange between himself and Mark Zuckerberg, where he's seen taunting the latter about the differences in their physical stature.
Musk first leaked the exchange to his biographer, Walter Isaacson. He then posted on Sunday a screenshot of what he said was the "full message" he sent to Zuckerberg about their much-anticipated cage match.
According to the screenshot that Musk first shared with Isaacson, Musk was seen asking a person he says is Zuckerberg if they would be interested in a "practice bout."
Zuckerberg, per Musk's screenshot, rebuffed the suggestion.
"If you still want to do a real MMA fight, then you should train on your own and let me know when you're ready to compete," Zuckerberg wrote, per Musk's record of the exchange.
"I don't want to keep hyping something that will never happen, so you should either decide you're going to do this and do it soon, or we should move on," Zuckerberg added.
Musk replied close to ten hours later, saying that he "will be in Palo Alto on Monday." Musk then suggested that the two men duke it out in Zuckerberg's backyard Octagon fighting ring.
"I have not been practicing much, apart from a brief bout with Lex Fridman today," Musk told Zuckerberg, per the screenshot. "While I think it is very unlikely, given our size difference, perhaps you are a modern-day Bruce Lee and will somehow win."
We were not able to independently verify when this text exchange took place. But Zuckerberg appeared to confirm the authenticity of the messages on Sunday, when he said on Threads that Musk had asked for a "practice round" in his backyard ring.
Representatives for Zuckerberg at Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider sent outside regular business hours.
The exchange — as posted by Musk — comes after Zuckerberg denied Musk's claim on Friday that the fight would take place at an "epic location" in "ancient Rome."
"If he ever agrees on an actual date, you'll hear it from me," Zuckerberg said in a Threads post on Friday. "Until then, please assume anything he says has not been agreed on."
Musk has, for his part, hasn't confirmed when the Musk vs. Zuck cage match might take place. The Tesla boss has also been talking about his old injuries an awful lot.
On August 6, he tweeted that he needed to get his neck and upper back scanned in an MRI before fixing a date for the fight. And then on Friday, Musk said he now needs to get surgery on his right shoulder.
"However, there is a problem with my right shoulder blade rubbing against my ribs, which requires minor surgery. Recovery will only take a few months," Musk tweeted.
Representatives for Musk at X did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider sent outside regular business hours.