Elon Musk has reiterated his readiness to physically battle Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, nearly a year after plans between the two to face off in a cage match fell through.
The tech billionaire rekindled his long-simmering rivalry with Zuckerberg during a visit to Congress on Wednesday. The Tesla CEO was in Washington to attend Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress.
“I will fight Zuckerberg anytime, anywhere, under any rules.” Musk told reporters: When asked about potential matches.
Zuckerberg denied Musk’s remarks. Write in a thread post: Are you really going to do this again?
The possibility of a real spat between Musk and Zuckerberg dates back to last June, when the two billionaires were at loggerheads after Zuckerberg announced the launch of Threads, a social media site that would compete directly with Elon Musk’s X.
Musk, who previously posted photos of himself going head-to-head with a sumo wrestler, responded by challenging Zuckerberg to a cage match.
Zuckerberg, a mixed martial arts aficionado and amateur Brazilian Jiu Jitsu practitioner, accepted the challenge, telling Musk to “send me your location.”
Negotiations for the charity match appear to be well advanced, with Musk declaring at one point that the event will be live-streamed on X.
Lex Friedman, a podcaster, AI researcher, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt, tweeted a photo of himself training with Musk ahead of the match.
But the highly anticipated cage match fell apart by last August when Musk posted that he might need surgery to repair a back injury he suffered during a match against a sumo wrestler eight years ago.
Zuckerberg eventually grew tired of the delays and said, “We all know Elon isn’t serious. It’s time to move on.”
The heads of Instagram and Facebook suggested a specific date for the fight and said UFC president Dana White had offered to make it a “legitimate fight” but to no avail.
“Elon hasn’t confirmed the date, says he needs surgery, and now wants to play a practice round in my backyard,” Zuckerberg wrote on Aug. 13. “If Elon ever gets serious about an actual date or official event, he knows how to contact me.”
Last year, The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk and Zuckerberg had been engaged in a “feud that had been simmering behind the scenes for years” that occasionally bubbled up in public.
