In times of yore, individuals who couldn’t settle their disputes amicably often challenged each other to a duel, in which they’d fight it out among themselves with swords and guns until one of them admitted defeat. In 2023, things don’t seem to have changed all that much.
After Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg had both appeared to agree to fight each other in a cage match in what had been a rapid escalation of some Twitter banter, both now seem to be in earnest preparation for their duel. Podcaster Lex Fridman, who is friends with both Zuckerberg and Musk, shared pictures of Musk in a training session with him. Fridman is a black belt in jiu jitsu.
“I did an impromptu training session with @elonmusk for a few hours yesterday,” Fridman tweeted. “I’m extremely impressed with his strength, power, and skill, on the feet and on the ground. It was epic. It’s really inspiring to see Elon and Mark doing martial arts, but I think the world is served far better if they train martial arts but not fight in the cage. That said, as Elon says, the most entertaining outcome is the most likely… I’m there for them, no matter what,” he tweeted.
In the pictures Fridman shared, he’s seen grappling with Elon Musk. In one picture, Musk seems to have him in a chokehold, while in another, he appears to be hip-throwing Fridman.
But it’s not only Musk who seems to be preparing for his bout. Mark Zuckerberg too had trained with Lex Fridman a few days prior, and Fridman had shared a video of the training session on his YouTube channel. The video show Zuckerberg and Fridman grappling with each other in jiu jitsu moves, and throwing each other on the ground.
Now what’s caused two of the richest men in the world — Elon is worth nearly $250 billion, and Zuck is worth $100 billion — to ditch their boardrooms for the training mat is an innocuous tweet. A twitter user had said that Instagram had been looking to build a Twitter competitor, to which Musk had sardonically replied: “I’m sure Earth can’t wait to be exclusively under Zuck’s thumb with no other options.” At this point, another user had jokingly told Musk to be careful because Mark Zuckerberg had been practicing Jui Jitsu, to which Musk had replied that he was up for a cage match if Zuckerberg was. Zuckerberg seemed to take the challenge seriously, and shared a post on his Instagram saying “send me location.”
But things had escalated only further from there. Musk had even suggested the Vegas Octagon as the location of their fight, and Dana White, who runs UFC, had even spoken to both of them, and reported that both were “dead serious” about their match. He said he’d be willing to produce the match, and it could end up becoming the most watched sports event in history. And Musk and Zuckerberg now both seem to be preparing hard for the match, with training sessions with martial arts experts. It remains to be seen if the match actually does take place, but as Musk often says — the most entertaining outcome is usually the most likely.