"If this is for real, I will do it," answered Musk.
So, is it for real? Will we get to see two rich dudes punch each other for social media clout and bragging rights?
Zuckerberg proved on Tuesday that he's been putting in the work to prepare for the cage fight, whether or not it actually happens. The Facebook founder posed alongside UFC stars Israel Adesanya and Alex Volkanovski for shirtless photos at his home on Tuesday, which Adesanya posted on social media. The pics show Zuckerberg, 39, looking ripped and sweaty after an apparent training session with the two mixed martial arts pros.
TMZ reports that Adesanya and Volkanovski stopped in at Zuckerberg's home in California for the training session after a UFC event in Las Vegas on Saturday.
"No fugazi with Mark," wrote Adesanya, adding a shark emoji to the tweet. "This is Serious Business!!"
Of course, that caption begs the question: Are they actually calling him Mark the Shark?
It looks like the champs had a good time at Zuckerberg's place, because Adesanya also posted photos and video on Instagram of Zuckerberg wakeboarding with one hand.
"It's the flex for me," he wrote.
Zuckerberg has actually been working on his jiu jitsu and MMA skills for a while, but he's ramped things up in the weeks since he and rival Elon Musk started talking about going toe-to-toe in the ring.
It's the kind of keyboard warrior challenge that may or may not actually come to pass in real life, but neither party has backed down in the first few weeks since agreeing to the match.
In fact, the New York Times reports that UFC boss Dana White has talked to both Musk and Zuckerberg about the idea.
"They both want to do it," White told the Times in late June.
Musk hasn't been posting as much info about his fight prep, although he's attempted to make a few jokes about it.
"Some chance fight happens in Colosseum," he tweeted on June 30.
He sent that tweet out several days after his mom, Maye Musk, declared that she doesn't want to see her boy fighting.
"Don't encourage this match!" she tweeted at podcaster Lex Fridman on June 22. She also retweeted an "Elon, please don't do it," meme on June 30.
Fridman later posted a photo of himself with Musk, fighting coach John Danaher and former Canadian MMA star Georges St-Pierre after a "great training session."
"No!" Maye Musk wrote in response. "Hoping this is just for fun."
Musk is wearing a shirt in the photo so it's hard to say how the 52-year-old's physique will compare to Zuckerberg's current shredded look.
Nevertheless, it looks like the real winners here are the UFC stars who are getting paid to throw punches with these billionaires.
If the fight does happen, it might give Canadians flashbacks to the time when Justin Trudeau stepped into the ring for a boxing match with then-senator Patrick Brazeau in 2012. Trudeau was just an MP and not the prime minister at the time, but the two used it as a means to work out a political argument.
Can Zuck and Musk do the same?
Twitter vs. Threads
Although a cage match sounds like a good way for Musk and Zuckerberg to clear the air, it's probably not going to be that simple. The two are locked in a much bigger fight right now over the future of social media, and that fight only escalated last week when Meta introduced Threads, its supposed "Twitter Killer" app.
"Our vision with Threads is to take what Instagram does best and expand that to text, creating a positive and creative space to express your ideas," Meta wrote in its announcement about the platform. The word "positive" is definitely key in that sentence, because many have blasted Musk for allowing controversial far-right figures like Andrew Tate back onto Twitter.
Twitter's value has been decaying ever since Musk took it over in a $44-billion deal and introduced subscription fees, scrapped content moderation and threw the door open to various conspiracy theories, including many promoted on his own account.
His latest move has been to cap the number of tweets you can read without a subscription. (Confession: I hit that limit while researching his tweets for this story.)
Sensing weakness, Zuckerberg rolled out his Twitter clone last week and the app hit over 100 million subscribers within five days, according to Zuck himself. That's likely due in part to the fact that Threads is tied in with Instagram, so you can easily port your account and all of your contacts over from IG to Threads with a few taps of a button.
Twitter has nearly 354 million subscribers, although that number is down from last year and is projected to fall by nearly 20 million next year according to Statista.
Twitter threatened to sue Meta last week after Threads launched, arguing that it was a "copycat" app made by Twitter employees who'd allegedly been poached from Musk's company. Meta responded by saying "that's just not a thing," per Fortune.
"Competition is fine, cheating is not," Musk also tweeted about the issue.
"We're often imitated — but the Twitter community can never be duplicated," added new Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino.
In other words, these guys could be battling it out in court for a while, whether or not they ever step into a ring and start throwing hands.
So like... are we doing this? Do we get to watch two rich dudes punch each other? And if they do fight, will it make either of them cool?
We're guessing it won't change people's minds one way or another. Still, if a billionaire or two gets humbled in this process, that's not so bad, right?
Who would win in a billionaire cage match?
