Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, two of the Bay Area’s and the world’s highest-profile tech billionaires, have agreed to fight each other in a cage match.
It is uncertain whether the match will actually take place, but the exchange has boosted traffic on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook with an endless stream of “choose your fighter” memes.
The idea for the physical confrontation took off in a series of viral messages posted to their respective social media platforms, instigated by Musk on Twitter, responding to a report about Zuckerberg’s plan to start a rival service called Threads on his Meta Platforms.
Musk said in a tweet that the world was “exclusively under Zuck’s thumb with no other options.” In a comment to that post, another Twitter user warned the Tesla and Space X owner about Zuckerberg’s jiu jitsu training.
“I’m up for a cage match if he is lol,” Musk wrote late Tuesday.
Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, quickly fired back.
“Send me location,” Zuckerberg wrote on a Wednesday night Instagram story that showed a screenshot of Musk’s tweet alongside another user’s message telling the Twitter owner to “start training.”
In response to Zuckerberg’s location request on Wednesday, Musk proposed the Vegas Octagon. He then joked about his fighting skills and workout routine, suggesting that the fight may not be serious.
The Vegas Octagon hosts Ultimate Fighting Championship bouts in a fenced ring.
While the 39-year-old Zuckerberg has trained extensively in mixed martial arts, completing his first jiu jitsu tournament last month, the 51-year-old Musk revealed, “I almost never work out, except for picking up my kids & throwing them in the air.”
He also joked, “I have this great move that I call ‘The Walrus,’ where I just lie on top of my opponent & do nothing.”
“The story speaks for itself,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement, while Twitter’s media email account responded with a poop emoji, its standard automated response to reporters.