Will they or won’t they? After months of back-and-forth taunts and rumblings of UFC getting in the mix, Twitter (or X) owner Elon Musk said Friday that his fight against Meta CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg will indeed take place—in Italy.
Writing that the fight will be managed by his own foundation alongside Zuckerberg’s—and not mixed martial arts league UFC, as rumored—Musk tweeted that the brawl will be livestreamed across both Twitter and an undisclosed Meta platform or platforms. Meta is the parent company behind Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp.
“Everything in [the] camera frame will be ancient Rome, so nothing modern at all,” Musk wrote. “I spoke to the PM of Italy and Minister of Culture. They have agreed on an epic location.”
Everything done will pay respect to the past and present of Italy
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 11, 2023
No date has been set for the fight. In the replies, Musk suggested that Twitter Blue subscribers will have some kind of special access or benefits for the showdown. Furthermore, he wrote that all proceeds from the fight will “go to veterans,” but did not elaborate further.
The billionaire social media titans have apparently been at odds for years, but their contentious relationship turned to talk of a physical fight in June following the announcement of Meta’s Threads—a Twitter clone.
After a Twitter user replied to Elon Musk mentioning that Zuckerberg has been training in jiu-jitsu, Musk commented, “I’m up for a cage match if he is lol.” Zuckerberg shared a screenshot of the tweet to his own Instagram profile, adding the comment, “Send me location”—a reference to a famed comment from former UFC combatant, Khabib Nurmagomedov.
UFC President Dana White said in late June that the tech titans were “absolutely dead serious” about fighting and that he was angling to make it happen, but it appears that UFC will not be involved in the ultimate matchup.
Musk previously suggested that he has lingering injuries from past martial arts training and fights that may need to be addressed. In a tweet reply Friday, Musk said that an MRI revealed that he needs surgery, although it’s unclear whether he’ll try to address that before the fight.
“There is a problem with my right shoulder blade rubbing against my ribs, which requires minor surgery,” Musk wrote. “Recovery will only take a few months.”
