In what is shaping up to be the tech world’s version of “Mortal Kombat” or “Record for Ragnarok,” Elon Musk has shared that his cage fight with Meta founder and actual MMA athlete Mark Zuckerberg will stream on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. Musk wrote on Sunday, “Zuck v Musk fight will be live-streamed on 𝕏. All proceeds will go to charity for veterans.”
Musk did not name what charity or charities would benefit. Musk’s update comes days after Zuckerberg revealed in an Instagram story that he recently built an octagon in his backyard to train — and that his wife Priscilla Chan wasn’t happy about it.
The Meta CEO shared a WhatsApp exchange with Chan in which he asked, “Did you see the octagon I put in the backyard?”
Chan confirmed that she did indeed see the octagon, and noted that she’s been “working on that grass for two years.”
Zuckerberg’s reply? “It looks awesome. We have plenty of yard space!”
The idea that Musk and Zuckerberg might face off in the flesh was first presented in June amid rumors that the Meta team was building a competitor platform for Twitter/X (the resulting platform, Threads, launched in July). After a user of Musk’s platform made a joke about Zuckerberg’s documented martial arts prowess, Musk replied, “I’m up for a cage match if he is lol.”
From there, what started as a joke quickly seemed to take on real-life form. The next day, Zuckerberg responded via an Instagram story, writing, “Send Me Location.” By June 21, Musk and Zuckerberg were both committed. The following day, UFC president Dana White said he’d talked with the two and that they were “absolutely dead serious” about battling it out in a Las Vegas UFC octagon.
White went on to say that he believes an MMA fight between the two could bring in triple the numbers that Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor’s bout did in 2017. That fight brought in a massive 50 million viewers and was crowned the second-biggest pay-per-view event of all time.
