It promised to be an epic fight in “ancient Rome”, but the long-awaited fight between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg deflated this weekend into a crossroads of accusations and insults on the different social networks that both have. Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, wrote in a post on his new platform, Threads: “I think we can all agree that Elon is not serious and it’s time to move on.” He adding that “if Elon is ever serious about a real date and official event, he already knows how to contact me.” A user shared the screenshot on Musk’s social network (recently renamed X) and he commented on it with a brief “Zuck is a chicken”. To add more context – and more drama – the journalist Walter Isaacson, Musk’s biographer, shared a screenshot in which the private conversation between the two tycoons could be read discussing the details of this fight between billionaires.
Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are two of the most media personalities in Silicon Valley. Both have been involved in the organization of an eventual fight for two months, which intends to take their virtual competition for leading the social network market to a more physical one. Last October, Elon Musk bought the social network Twitter, which he has renamed X and has run erratically and controversially ever since. Zuckerberg, struggling in this field, with the Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp platforms in his portfolio, understood that there was room to imitate his competitor until he unseated him (a strategy that he has already carried out, quite successfully, with Snapchat and its storieswhich he plagiarized on Instagram).
Last June it launched Threads, which reached 100 million users in just five days. Musk then threatened to sue him for plagiarism and then the accusations and confrontations between the two began. Threads has drastically deflated since then. According to data from the analysis portal Similarweb, the number of daily active users on the Android platform, has dropped by 80%. The verbal and testosteronic showdown between the two billionaires has to be read with these facts in mind.
“Do you want to do a training match at your house next week?” Musk challenged Zuckerberg in a private message this weekend. “If you still want to do an MMA fight [de artes marciales mixtas por sus siglas en inglés] Really, you should train on your own and let me know when you’re ready to compete,” Zuckerberg replied. “I don’t want to keep hyping up something that is never going to happen. So you have to decide. Either we do this and we do it fast or we should turn the page.” Musk closed the conversation calling for a fight this Monday, regretting not having had time to train and challenging his partner: “I think it is quite unlikely, taking into account our difference in sizes [Musk mide 188 centímetros frente a los 172 del jefe de Meta] But maybe you’re a modern Bruce Lee and you win, somehow.” He later leaked the private conversation, whereupon Zuckerberg released his own statement.
Zuckerberg has been training for months and has participated in martial arts tournaments in Silicon Valley, where he has already fought with other technology employees. He has even won a gold medal with his team, Guerrilla Jiu-Jitsu. For his part, Musk has been preparing the meeting more through the media than physically, fueling the expectation with bombastic and contradictory statements. In some messages, he said the date of the fight was “in flux” because he needed an MRI of his neck and back. Last Friday, he claimed that he had spoken to the Italian government about an “epic” location of “ancient Rome.” Musk closed his Twitter thread with a single word: “Gladiators”, which immediately made one think of the Roman Colosseum. The Italian Prime Minister, the far-right Giorgia Meloni, did not confirm these statements.
It is not known who could win this hypothetical fight. Not even if this will come to pass, but both tycoons seem determined to win, at least the battle of the story. Boxing and martial arts have become in recent years an effective activity for youtubers and streamers to get large audiences. And this is exactly what both tycoons are trying to do. Their confrontation may not even take place in the Colosseum in Rome, but what seems evident is that both have turned it into a circus.
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