Musk, Zuckerberg ‘Dead Serious’ About Cage Fight in UFC Octagon: Dana White

SpaceX, Twitter, and electric car maker Tesla CEO Elon Musk (R) and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Mandel Ngan and Alain Jocard/AFP via Getty Images

Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg and billionaire businessman Elon Musk are “absolutely dead serious” about a cage match in a UFC Octagon, according to UFC President Dana White.

White told TMZ Sports in a June 22 interview that he has been communicating with the two social media execs in recent days and both have indicated that they plan to fight in Vegas.

“Talked with Mark and Elon last night, both guys are absolutely dead serious about this,” White said. “They both said, ‘Yeah, we’ll do it.' They both want to do it,” he added.

White said he expects the fight “would be the biggest fight ever in the history of the world, bigger than anything that’s ever been done,” and would bring in hundreds of millions of dollars that would likely go to charity.

“It would break all pay-per-view records. These guys would raise hundreds of millions of dollars for charity. You don’t have to be a fighting fan to be interested in this fight. Everybody would want to see it,” the UFC president continued.

White noted that the biggest fight of all time was Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor. That fight took place in 2017 and Mayweather defeated his rival.

“I just think it triples that. I think it triples what that did. There’s no limit on what that thing can make … Everybody would watch it, everybody would want to see it,” White said of a potential spar between Zuckerberg and Musk.

Elon Musk's photo through a Twitter logo on Oct. 28, 2022. Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Reuters

Meta Working on Twitter Rival

Reports began emerging of a potential fight between the two billionaires earlier this week amid claims that Zuckerberg is working on an application similar to Twitter, which Musk purchased in October 2022 for $44 billion.

The new app would be based on Instagram, which is owned by Meta Platforms Inc, and will integrate with ActivityPub, the decentralized social media protocol, according to The Verge.

Meta chief product officer Chris Cox said during a companywide meeting earlier this month that the app was a direct response to Twitter, adding that the company has been “hearing from creators and public figures who are interested in having a platform that is sanely run, that they believe that they can trust and rely upon for distribution,” the publication reported.

As news of the yet-to-be-unveiled app appeared on social media, SpaceX chief Musk weighed in when some Twitter users pointed out that Zuckerberg practices Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ).

Zuckerberg shared on Instagram back in May that he had competed in his first jiu-jitsu tournament and “won some medals” for the Guerrilla jiu-jitsu team.

“I’m sure Earth can’t wait to be exclusively under Zuck’s thumb with no other options,” Musk, who recently revealed that he was involved in “real hard-core street fights” as a youth in South Africa, wrote, adding “I’m up for a cage match if he is lol.”

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in Washington on Oct. 23, 2019. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

‘Send Me Location’

In a surprise move, Zuckerberg later shared a screenshot of Musk’s tweet in an Instagram story alongside the message, “Send Me Location,” in an apparent reference to former UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov, who coined the phrase.

“If this is for real, I will do it,” the Tesla chief posted in response, suggesting the Vegas Octagon as the venue for the fight

“Let’s go full MMA,” he added in a separate tweet.

Sports betting platforms are already betting their odds on the two potential opponents, with Zuckerberg up for a 56 percent chance of winning the fight, according to Oddspedia.

However, Owain Flanders, news editor at VegasSlotsOnline.com, put the odds at 3-to-2 in favor of Musk.

“Musk’s training for potential space travel and his notorious work ethic make him a formidable opponent,” Flanders said.

Meanwhile, high-profile figures including Texas Governor Greg Abbott have urged the two businessmen to engage in what he says will be “the biggest fight in UFC history.”

This is not the first time the two billionaires have made public digs at one another. In 2017, the pair became locked in a standoff over the future of artificial intelligence, something that Musk has previously said has the potential to “destroy humanity” but which Zuckerberg is “optimistic“ about.

In recent months, Musk has stepped up criticism of Zuckerberg and his companies, posting earlier this year that Instagram “makes people depressed,” and in May stating that Whatsapp “cannot be trusted“ after Twitter engineer Foad Dabiri claimed that his WhatsApp application was constantly switching on the microphone, even while he was sleeping.

Reuters contributed to this report.