Is it time to move on from the fantasy of Zuck vs. Musk? Mark Zuckerberg’s coach Khai Wu certainly thinks the fight is dead.
Is the Mark Zuckerberg vs. Elon Musk fight dead? One of Zuckerberg’s main coaches certainly thinks it is.
Khai Wu is a longtime coach of the Meta / Facebook founder, and was featured in several of the first videos showing Zuck training mixed martial arts. If anyone knows what’s going on with the billionaire’s current fighting plans, it’d be Wu.
Wu recently signed a contract to compete in the PFL and was on hand for the promotion’s lightweight and welterweight semi-finals at The Theatre in Madison Square Garden. He spoke with Mirror Fighting and basically shut down the speculative battle between two of the richest men in the world.
“I don’t think Elon wants it and that’s all I can say,” Wu said. “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.
“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,” Wu added. “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.”
The potential fight between Zuckerberg and Musk went sideways after Musk challenged Zuck to an informal scrap in Mark’s personal octagon, which he had built in his home’s backyard.
“Mark takes this sport seriously and isn’t going to fight someone who randomly shows up at his house,” a statement from Zuckerberg’s representative read.
“If Elon ever gets serious about a real date and official event, he knows how to reach me,” Zuckerberg wrote on Threads, Meta’s version of Twitter. “Otherwise, time to move on. I’m going to focus on competing with people who take the sport seriously.”
The silver lining here is that Mark Zuckerberg continues to be very serious about eventually competing in mixed martial arts. While it won’t be as exciting to watch him choke out some random opponent rather than Elon Musk, there’s no denying his participation would help raise the sport’s profile significantly.