- An online exchange between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg may actually lead to a physical confrontation.
- UFC president Dana White says he spoke to both men and that they’re “dead serious” about fighting.
- Whether or not it will actually happen is up in the air, but the potential pay-per-view windfall would be huge.
What started out as some late-night barbs over Meta’s planned Twitter competitor has now escalated into a possible Ultimate Fighting Championship event.
“Probably spent an hour and a half on the phone with both of them last night,” UFC president Dana White told TMZ. “Both guys are absolutely dead serious about this.”
The fight talk officially started on Tuesday, when Musk said he was “up for a cage match” against Zuckerberg, who has been practicing jiu jitsu. Zuckerberg then took to his own platform, asking Musk to “send me location” for the fight.
While White isn’t the first third-party observer to try to get involved in the match, UFC would seem like a natural host for the battle of the billionaires.
On Thursday evening, Musk brought up the possibility of an MMA-style event, the type of bout that the UFC specializes in.
White told TMZ that Zuckerberg was the first of the tech titans to reach out, asking if Musk “was serious.” White claims he relayed the question to Musk, who said he was “dead serious.”
White, playing the part of a neutral promoter, said both men would put up a fight, referencing Zuckerberg’s well-known training regiment and the fact that Musk told him that “people might not think this of me, but I’ve been in plenty of fights growing up in South Africa.”
A handful of hypothetical betting lines have already been released by sportsbooks, with the fight being considered a toss-up.
The real winner, though, would be White: “This would be the biggest fight ever, in the history of the world,” he told TMZ. “It would break all pay-per-view records.”
White said the fight would cost around $100 to watch on pay-per-view and that it would raise “hundreds of millions of dollars” for charity.
Representatives for the UFC, Zuckerberg and Musk did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
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