War of words erupts again between Musk, Zuckerberg

Los Angeles: In an interesting turn in the Elon Musk-Mark Zuckerberg much-anticipated ‘cage fight’, both tech leaders again entered an indirect war of words.

Initially, Zuckerberg posted on Instagram story, “Send me the location” along with the screenshot of Musk’s tweet where he had first challenged the Meta owner.

Responding to this, the X-owner accused Zuckerberg of apparently not accepting the challenge.

Taking to X (formerly Twitter), Musk stated, “Fight Recap: I joked on X about fighting Zuck Zuck then said “SEND ME LOCATION” Italy graciously offered a Colosseum Zuck declined I suggested his home as “safe space” Tragically, he was ahem “travelling” Is there anywhere he will fight?”

Earlier on Sunday, Zuckerberg in a cryptic post, gave the impression that he has backed off from the fight.

In a post on Threads, he said that he was going to "focus on competing with people who take the sport seriously".

"I think we can all agree Elon isn't serious and it's time to move on. 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," he said in the post.

This didn’t go down well with Musk, who took to X and threw some jabs at his tech rival. “Zuck is a chicken,” Musk posted.

As per Variety, the Meta and X/Twitter CEOs first sparked conversations about a potential MMA-style cage match in a series of back-and-forth messages on their platforms. Musk kicked off the exchange while replying to a June 20 Twitter thread where he wrote, “I’m up for a cage match if he is lol.”

Recently Musk posted that the “Zuck v Musk fight” would be live-streamed via X with all proceeds going to charity. Zuckerberg fired back at Musk, taking a subtle dig at X/Twitter, when he wrote on Threads, “Shouldn’t we use a more reliable platform that can actually raise money for charity?”