Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said Sunday it was time to “move on” from a proposed cage fight between himself and Elon Musk, saying his fellow billionaire had failed to show any real desire to enter the arena.
“I think we can all agree Elon isn’t serious and it’s time to move on,” he wrote on Threads, Meta’s new alternative to Twitter, now known as X. “I offered a real date. Dana White offered to make this a legit competition for charity. Elon won’t confirm a date, then says he needs surgery, and now asks to do a practice round in my backyard instead.”
Zuckerberg went on to say that if Musk “ever gets serious … he knows how to reach me.”
“Otherwise,” he continued, “time to move on. I’m going to focus on competing with people who take the sport seriously.”
Musk replied to the message on his own platform.
“Zuck is a chicken,” he wrote on X.
In a separate post, he said Zuckerberg “can’t eat at chick fil a because that would be cannibalism,” referring to the fast food chain specialising in chicken sandwiches.
The ongoing drama surrounding the event has always made it seem unlikely. Musk first wrote a few months ago that he was “up for a cage match” with Zuckerberg amid reports Meta was preparing to launch Threads, a challenge the Facebook co-founder appeared to agreed to.
Various details were bandied back and forth, with Zuckerberg posting a shirtless photo of himself training with mixed martial arts instructors. Musk proposed the fight take place in Las Vegas, then said it would happen at an “epic” location in Italy. But Musk also said he “almost never” worked out and needed an MRI before he could agree to a match.
“I spoke to the PM of Italy and Minister of Culture,” Musk wrote last week. “They have agreed on an epic location.”
For now, that epic location will remain the internet.
Josephine Harvey contributed to this report.