London CNN –
For two of tech’s most powerful billionaires, the business rivalry doesn’t seem to be enough. Now Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg say they want to settle scores in a cage fight.
Tesla (TSLA) Twitter owner and CEO Musk recently tweeted that he was “up for a cage fight” with Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta. In an Instagram Story Wednesday, Zuckerberg responded by posting a screenshot of Musk’s tweet with the caption “Send me location.”
Then musk answered on a tweet about the fight by Alex Heath, editor of tech news website Verge, with “Vegas Octagon” – a reference to the Las Vegas arena where the Ultimate Fighting Championship is held.
“I have this awesome move I call ‘The Walrus’ where I just lay down on top of my opponent and do nothing,” he added in a separate tweet.
CNN reached out to Meta for comment. A company spokesman told Verge: “The [Instagram] The story speaks for itself.”
It remains unclear whether Zuckerberg and Musk are serious or just laughing.
However, it remains to be seen who would win in a cage fight. Musk is physically taller than Zuckerberg, but the meta boss practices jiu-jitsu, the Brazilian martial art, and won gold and silver at a tournament in May.
Oddspedia, a sports betting site, compiled the odds from several different bookmakers including Bovada, Bet Online and Ladbrokes and concluded that Zuckerberg has an 83% chance of winning the fight.
Bookmaker Paddy Power, meanwhile, is betting there will never be a game but if it does both men have an equal chance of winning.
“If this fight does indeed continue, with any luck they will talk sense into each other,” a spokesman for the Irish company said in a statement.
The two – who fought for a top spot in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index in the past before Musk became the richest man in the world – have clashed before.
In 2017, they had a very public argument about the future of artificial intelligence.
Musk has repeatedly warned of the dangers of AI, calling it a potentially existential threat to humanity. Zuckerberg, on the other hand, was much more optimistic.
During a live Facebook broadcast at the time, he dismissed “naysayers” who outlined “doomsday scenarios” as “pretty irresponsible.”
Musk fired back shortly after, tweeting, “I spoke to Mark about this. His understanding of the subject is quite limited.”
Musk ousted Zuckerberg from third place on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index in 2020, before becoming the world’s richest person shortly thereafter.
He was briefly ousted from the top spot in December by Bernard Arnault, chairman of French luxury goods giant LVMH (LVMHF), before reclaiming his title in May. Zuckerberg is now in 10th place.