Is Elon Musk vs Mark Zuckerberg fight still happening? Meta CEO and X owner comment on fate of cage match

There’s been posturing on both sides as Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk use their respective social media platforms to sh*ttalk each other ahead of a possible cage match.

The pair of entrepreneurs, worth a combined $330 billion, have been at odds for years, but their falling out came after Musk’s purchase of social media company Twitter (now X) in October 2022, as they became direct competitors.

Things got rockier when Zuckerberg launched Threads, an app designed to rival X as a microblogging site. Zuckerberg launched the app without adverts on 5 July and it is now estimated to have more than 120 million users.

The call to arms came shortly before Threads launched, with Musk replying to a Twitter user’s post about the upcoming app, stating ‘"up for a cage match if he is’.

Zuckerberg replied ‘send me location’ and advised Musk to start training - things picked up from there and the internet turned the whole thing into a firestorm of excitement before plans for the fight had even got off the ground. And now it seems that the fight is over before it even got started.

What has Mark Zuckerberg said about the fight?

Meta CEO Zuckerberg took to his new social media platform Threads and cast doubt on the fight in his latest post.

He wrote: “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 deal for charity. Elon won’t confirm the 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.”

So the Zuck clearly doesn’t have much hope that the fight will go ahead, but what has Musk said?

What has Elon Musk said about fighting Mark Zuckerberg?

On the other hand, Musk seems to be under the impression that the fight is still on, and in his eyes, it’s Zuckerberg that’s dodging it.

In a series of posts on the social media site formerly known as Twitter, he posted: “Knock, knock … challenge accepted … open the door @finkd [Zuckerberg’s X handle]. Thought you might want some tea, so I brought the bags.

He followed up with: “For the Tesla FSD test drive in Palo Alto tonight, I will ask the car to drive to @finkd’s house. Will also test latest X livestream video, so you can monitor our adventure in real-time! If we get lucky and Zuck my 👅 actually answers the door, the fight is on!”

Musk topped it off with another post mocking Zuckerberg for trying to avoid the fight, sharing: “(Zuck thread coming soon about how he would of course love to fight anytime, but blah blah UFC something something)”.

Musk’s posts don’t exactly help to clear anything up - the world’s richest man is clearly suggesting that he is happy to fight Zuckerberg, though in an impromptu fight at the Meta founder’s home, rather than at an official venue as Zuckerberg planned.

So, is the Mark Zuckerberg vs Elon Musk fight happening?

Unfortunately, as the two billionaires remain at an impasse over when and where the cage match will take place, it doesn’t look like the fight will happen.

Musk hasn’t taken the fight seriously in recent days - he’s shared a snap of himself lifting a dumbbell at his office, and suggested he would turn up at Zuck’s house for a fight, but has mostly shied away from the vaunted big venue experience that he himself mooted just days ago. On Friday he even said that he had spoken to the Italian Prime Minister and hinted that the fight would take place in Rome.

For the time being at least, the anticipated cage fight which could have raised around $1 billion for charity, probably isn’t happening.