25 August 2023 , 07:18
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Mark Zuckerberg's MMA coach has joked that talks of a fight with Elon Musk were fun while they lasted - but believes the bout is off.
Khai Wu was in New York this week to attend the PFL playoffs after signing for MMA's No.2 promotion earlier this year, where he spoke with Mirror Fighting about the latest on the Zuckerberg v Musk super-fight. The two social media supremos, who run Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp and X [Twitter] between them had gone back-and-forth on social media, and even spoken with the UFC.
But with Musk posturing about the fight taking place at Rome's Colosseum and threatening to show up to Zuckerberg's house while he was travelling, it appears talks have fallen by the wayside. While UFC boss Dana White has continued to work with the Meta owner on a date, it seems he is eager to fight elsewhere after falling in love with the sport in recent years.
"I don't think Elon wants it and that's all I can say," Wu told Mirror Fighting at Madison Square Garden. "I wouldn't be surprised [if Zuckerberg fights someone else], Mark is extremely competitive and extremely gifted in his athletic ventures, did a jiu-jitsu tournament and won it which was awesome. So I wouldn't be surprised, he trains really hard all the time and I wouldn't be surprised if he wanted to challenge himself. I Facebook requested him and we took it from there to the Instagram DMs and then we Threaded it up and now we're good."
Musk is 13 years Zuckerberg's senior at 52 and is the considerably larger man in terms of height and weight. But Wu feels that his health history coupled with the chasm in fight experience between the two explains why he isn't actually interested in making the fight happen.
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"Elon just had his 52nd birthday and if you look at his history he hasn't been the healthiest in terms of being in shape," he continued. "Taking on a fight against someone like Mark? I'm not sure that's good for your health. So realistically it was fun, but all that other stuff that came after it was just fluff.
"I think that's why he didn't want to take it because realistically it's not good. The thing with fighting is no matter what you can't buy it. You get in the cage with me I'm throwing that punch as hard as I can, there's no real way like in a team sport where if you play basketball you can get carried.
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"Fighting is pure, that's why these really successful guys that don't need a fighting career want to do it. It challenges you and you cannot say no to sparring and you can't go 'ah I don't feel like training let me get my PR person to go train for me,' it's a very pure thing and you need to be 100 per cent there. It's probably a good distraction from their life and work."
UFC boss White was immediately interested in making the bout happen after Zuckerberg answered an initial callout from Musk that had been made through a fan reply on what was then called Twitter. Boxing promoters such as Eddie Hearn and Jake Paul also clamoured to make the fight, but it appeared White had won the race when he was spotted in a 'Zuckerberg vs Musk' t-shirt.
But Wu insists that it wasn't a particularly high-pressure response from Zuckerberg when he mentioned the fight initially, adding: "You know as much as I do because all I do is show up and train. If he says 'we're going to fight Elon' then we'd get guys who are a bit bigger to train for. But it wasn't like I got a call in the middle of the night from Mark like 'hey Khai we've got a fight with Elon Musk', it wasn't really like that at all. But it was fun while it lasted."