Last Updated: August 11, 2023, 18:08 IST
San Francisco, California, USA
CEOs of X and Meta, Elon Musk (L) and Mark Zuckerberg (R), will go head-to-head in a cage fight in Italy. (Image: Reuters)
Elon Musk said he spoke to the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and agreed on an epic location.
The CEO of social media platform X, formerly Twitter, Elon Musk on Friday said that the fight between him and CEO of rival social media platform Meta will be held in Italy.
The fight will be managed by my and Zuck’s foundations (not UFC).Livestream will be on this platform and Meta. Everything in camera frame will be ancient Rome, so nothing modern at all.
I spoke to the PM of Italy and Minister of Culture. They have agreed on an epic location.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 11, 2023
Taking to social media platform X, Musk said he held a conversation with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and the nation’s culture minister Gennaro Sangiuliano about the fight and its location.
“The fight will be managed by my and Zuck’s foundations (not UFC). Livestream will be on this platform and Meta. Everything in the camera frame will be ancient Rome, so nothing modern at all. I spoke to the PM of Italy and the Minister of Culture. They have agreed on an epic location. Everything done will pay respect to the past and present of Italy,” Elon Musk said in a series of tweets.
“And all proceeds go to veterans,” he further added.
Elon also hinted that X’s blue subscribers will get ‘bonus’, hinting towards ‘behind the scenes’ footage.
The feud between the two tech titans began following the launch of X’s rival Threads which Musk alleges has copied a lot of its features from X. In June 2023, Elon Musk while interacting with X, then Twitter, users said he is up for a ‘cage fight’ if Mark Zuckerberg is ready.
Zuckerberg responded by saying, “Send me location”.
The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) president Dana White, who earlier proposed to facilitate the fight between both billionaires, said both of them are dead serious about the fight.
Zuckerberg, 39, is an amateur mixed martial arts fighter and trained in jiu-jitsu and was seen training with two world-class UFC fighters namely Israel Adesanya and Alexander Volkanovski.
Musk is a self-proclaimed street fighter and was spotted training with MMA legend Georges St-Pierre, renowned jiu-jitsu and martial arts coach John Danaher and podcaster Lex Fridman.
A report by entertainment news website TMZ said last month that the fight could be held in the Coliseum.
(more details are being added)