How Elon Musk vs. Mark Zuckerberg’s MMA fight became the dumbest story of the year

Photo by Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images

The entire stupid Musk vs. Zuck saga, explained.

The Mark Zuckerberg vs. Elon Musk fight has unquestionably been the stupidest sports story of the summer. Two bickering billionaires, competing to see who’s the most loathsome, teased the possibility of a charity MMA fight to determine who was less sad.

Since then it’s morphed into a mom banning the fight, the Coliseum being involved, a possible surgery, and a late-night fight challenge at a mansion. To say this has jumped the shark is an insult to hammerheads, and the most stunning element of this all is that it’s somehow made Zuckerberg come out looking like the hero of this whole thing.

Let’s break down every step of this stupidity and where it might go from here.

June 20, 2023: Elon challenges Zuck

As part of Elon Musk ruining Twitter and destroying the company he bought in order to prevent personal documents coming out in discovery, Mark Zuckerberg sees an opportunity to release his own competitor “Threads.” With news that Zuck is coming for a piece of Twitter’s pie, Elon says the following:

It’s important we have an aside here to note that Zuckerberg would extremely be up for a cage match. The Meta CEO has been training Brazilian jujitsu as a hobby, and has routinely been entering tournaments in California. While he’s only a white belt, he has won several tournaments in his class.

Zuck also got choked out in a competition once and tried to bury the story.

June 21, 2023: Zuck accepts

In response to Elon asking for the fight, Zuckerberg goes on Instagram to accept the challenge.

As soon as word got out that Zuckerberg was down to fight, Elon said he wanted to hold this at a nondescript “Vegas Octagon,” which isn’t a place that exists. It’s still unclear what he meant by this.

June 22, 2023: Elon’s mom cancels the fight

Knowing her 51-year-old large adult son with no fighting experience was going to get bodied by Mark Zuckerberg, Maye Musk says the fight is cancelled.

At this point things go quiet for a while. It seems the fight won’t happen, because Elon doesn’t want the smoke and his late night Twitter fingers didn’t really take into account the fact he can’t fight at all.

June 30, 2023: Potential details emerge

After a week of silence on the fight, things roar back into being a possibility after the New York Times report that leaks from UFC president Dana White indicate that he’d been privately organizing the fight to happen in Vegas as an exhibition fight, with money going to charity.

Musk almost immediately torpedoes the idea with the stupidest suggestion on earth.

There is absolutely no chance the Italian government would let two billionaires defile the 2,000 year old colosseum with cameras, lighting, and production for a vanity fight — but Musk continues to puff out his chest. Even while the Times reports that Musk is woefully unprepared for any kind of MMA fight.

“One person close to Mr. Musk said that while he hated sports and didn’t appear to have the discipline to train regularly, no one could rule anything out with him.”

August 6, 2023: Zuck drops a date

After a month with no information outside of Elon occasionally tweeting some random threats, Zuckerberg goes on threads to announce that he’s given Musk’s team a date for the fight: August 26.

The resounding through-line is Zuckerberg saying he’s serious about the sport, and is willing to fight if there’s enough lead time and both participants train for the fight — while Elon’s plan is to quip that he’s been wrestling podcasters at home, and lifting weights, without any kind of formal training.

Zuckerberg seems resigned to this never happening and Elon just being full of hot air, as he has from the beginning.

August 11, 2023: Elon keeps blowing smoke

Speaking authoritatively on the fight, Musk tweets new details that seem to indicate details have been agreed to and the fight will happen.

You might be shocked to hear this, but this was total crap. Not only had nothing been agreed to by Musk and Zuckerberg, but the Italian government denies there has been any contact with Musk over using the colosseum in Rome as a site for the fight. In fact, their version of Musk’s conversation didn’t include anything about the fight.

Meanwhile Zuckerberg is still moving ahead with his personal training, independent of the fight — hosting former UFC fighters at his home for sparring sessions.

August 13, 2023: Elon moves the goalposts

After saying two days earlier that there would be a massive fight streamed on the two largest social media platforms with ludicrous production values, Musk now shares an image of a conversation between the pair, with Zuckerberg saying he doesn’t want to hype an event that won’t happen, with Musk now trying to have the fight happen behind closed doors without anyone watching.

August 14, 2023: Zuck calls off the stupidity.

One day after Elon’s tweet, Zuckerberg essentially cancels the fight, saying that Musk isn’t serious about this ever happening.

Maturely, Elon says he’s going to drive to Zuck’s house anyway and fight him.

Suprisingly, there’s never a video posted and Zuckerberg isn’t even at home because he’s traveling right now… but that was never the point of this. Also, if you’re wondering what the emoji usage is about, it’s because Zuck rhymes with “suck” and the tongue emoji apparently means “cock,” because Elon is a stable genius.

Is this fight ever going to happen?

HELL NO! It was never going to happen. Elon has absolutely no intention of following through, and the only people who believe he will are those with their entire futures tied up in DogeCoin, who are desperate for Musk to be a patron of their cryptocurrency to save them from financial ruin.

Both of these dudes suck, but the entire affair has made Zuckerberg into a good guy. He’s just a dude who’s actually passionate about fighting and willing to throw down as part of his training. Meanwhile Musk continues to do what he does best: Overpromise, underdeliver and surround himself with sycophantic enablers who are hell bent on telling him what a genius he is.

Please just let this hell end.