Twitter owner Elon Musk said he was ready to fight in the ring with Facebook and Instagram owner Mark Zuckerberg. He accepted the challenge, inviting the opponent to choose a place to fight. Billionaires have been publicly feuding for several years now.
This time, the verbal skirmish began when Musk left a comment under the message of a Twitter user who wrote about the plans of Zuckerberg-owned company Meta to launch a new social network – a competitor to Twitter. "I'm sure the Earth can't wait to get under Zuckerberg's shoe and have no other options," Musk wrote. One of the users responded to this: "Be careful, I heard he [Zuckerberg] is doing jiu-jitsu now." Musk reacted, "I'm ready for the match in the ring if he's ready."
Zuckerberg responded to the challenge on Instagram by posting a screenshot of Musk's tweets with the caption: "Send me a seat."
Musk suggested the Vegas Octagon arena in Las Vegas, where the UFC fighting championship matches are held. He wrote about this under a tweet from the editor of The Verge, who said that, according to his information, Zuckerberg was not joking and was ready to face an opponent in the ring.
Mark Zuckerberg is 39 years old, he is seriously involved in martial arts, in particular, in May he won two medals in a jiu-jitsu tournament. Musk will turn 52 at the end of June and, according to him, his athletic training mostly boils down to picking up his children and throwing them into the air. Musk also said that his favorite move is called the "walrus": "I just lie on my opponent and do nothing."
- Musk and Zuckerberg have been publicly critical of each other since at least 2016. Then Zuckerberg was outraged by the fact that the explosion of a SpaceX rocket destroyed a satellite owned by Facebook, which it was supposed to deliver into orbit.
- A year later, Zuckerberg called "irresponsible" Musk's statements warning about the dangers associated with the development of artificial intelligence. Musk stated that Zuckerberg had a "limited" understanding of the subject under discussion.
- In 2017, Musk removed the pages of his SpaceX and Tesla companies from Facebook, and in 2020 he urged everyone to delete accounts on this social network, agreeing with the thesis that too much power was concentrated in the hands of its owner.
- In 2021, Musk continued to accuse Facebook of spying on users.
In April of this year, in an interview with Fox host Carlson Tucker, Musk criticized Zuckerberg for spending $400 million on the "Go and Vote" campaign aimed at encouraging the people of the United States to vote in elections. Musk believes that this campaign was a front to fund the Democratic Party. The owner of Twitter called the rival "Zuck the fourteenth", alluding to the French king Louis XIV, known for his arrogance and authority. According to Musk, Zuckerberg is engaged in censorship and opposes freedom of speech.
Musk also drew attention to an investigation by The Wall Street Journal published in early June, the authors of which accused Instagram of distributing content for pedophiles. The article stated that Instagram had a network of accounts dedicated to finding and buying child pornography. “Extremely disturbing,” Musk commented.