‘It’s time to maneuver on’

The long-hyped possibility of a cage match between tech titans Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk appears to be no more, after Zuckerberg dismissed Musk for allegedly delaying their anticipated showdown within the ring.

“I feel we will all agree Elon is not serious and it is time to move on,” the Facebook co-founder wrote Sunday in a post on Threads, the text-based app Meta launched as a competitor to X, the company formerly referred to as Twitter.

The social media executives have been teasing the potential of a mixed martial arts fight since June, calling it a “cage match,” a casual term referring to wrestling in a closed-in space that combatants aim to flee from.

But in his latest comments on the matter, Zuckerberg said that while he was able to fight, Musk kept coming up with reasons he couldn’t.

“I offered an actual date. Dana White offered to make this a legit competition for charity,” Zuckerberg wrote, referring to the president of the Las Vegas-based company Ultimate Fighting Championship, who the Latest York Times previously reported was trying to arrange the fight.

“Elon won’t confirm a date, then says he needs surgery, and now asks to do a practice round in my backyard as an alternative,” the chief executive officer of Meta continued. Musk previously claimed he might have surgery before fighting his rival.

“If Elon ever gets serious a few real date and official event, he knows methods to reach me. Otherwise, time to maneuver on. I’ll deal with competing with individuals who take the game seriously,” Zuckerberg concluded.

Musk has not yet publicly responded to Zuckerberg’s latest comments, and a spokesperson for X couldn’t immediately be reached.

But earlier Sunday, he tweeted what he claimed was a screenshot of a text conversation with Zuckerberg by which Musk appeared to suggest they meet for “a practice bout” on Monday within the backyard of Zuckerberg’s Palo Alto home, where he previously claimed to have built an Octagon, a UFC-branded ring, TMZ reported earlier this month.

Their friendly rivalry intensified when Zuckerberg rolled out Threads last month in a bid to compete with X. An attorney for Musk subsequently sent a letter accusing Meta of misappropriating X’s trade secrets and hiring ex-Twitter employees to make Threads.

“I’m sure Earth cannot wait to be exclusively under Zuck’s thumb with no other options,” Musk tweeted ahead of the Threads rollout.

Shortly after, in responding to an X user who joked about Zuckerberg being trained within the Brazilian combat sport of jiujitsu, Musk responded, “I’m up for a cage match if he’s lol.”

Meta’s communications director, Andy Stone, responded to reports of the letter from Musk’s attorney, saying on Threads, “Nobody on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter worker — that is just not a thing.”

Musk and Zuckerberg are the second and sixteenth richest people on the planet, respectively, in keeping with Forbes‘ most up-to-date list of billionaires.