Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk cage showdown makes no sense, but nothing does any more

And yes, this is why I worry Mark Zuckerberg is going to fight Elon Musk in a steel cage.

It’s foolish, it’d be the nadir of tech moguldom, it shouldn’t happen, it makes no sense — but what makes sense anymore in this strange, mad world?

If I had to bet, I would still bet against it. I don’t care how much these bazillionaire frenemies tease the possibility they might rumble in the flesh, titan vs. titan, nerds in four ounce gloves for the Thrilla in Mozilla.

“I’m up for a cage match if he is lol,” Musk tweeted the other day.

“Send me location,” Zuck replied via Instagram Stories.

“If this is for real, I’ll do it,” Musk volleyed back.

That was enough smoke to send the tech media into a frenzy, the sports world not far behind. The UFC promoter Dana White, showing admirable restraint, announced that a Zuckerberg-Musk fight “would be the biggest fight ever in the history of the world.”

If you think this sounds ridiculous, welcome to the sport of fighting, where even the legit stuff comes with a side order of crazy. There’s no room in the combat trade for the mild, the sheepish, the sceptical. If the money’s right, no proposal is too silly to be considered.

That’s an interesting hurdle here. Every professional fighter has a number — a dollar figure at which they will slink out of retirement, jump up or down a weight class, or start answering texts from Jake and Logan Paul.

But Zuckerberg, 39, and Musk, 51, are two of earth’s wealthiest beings. They surely can’t be moved by mere cash, baubles or even a Paul.

So they will fight … why? The Journal’s Tim Higgins and Deepa Seetharaman recently chronicled the long-simmering feud between Zuckerberg and Musk, including Zuck’s recent initiative to create a rival to Twitter. There’s real tension there, and I’m sure it’s the talk of chatty group rides on the Paradise Loop.

But is a rich person’s grudge deep enough to rise in the darkness to jump rope and hit the speed bag? Fight training is a monastic existence. The hungriest fighters are typically ones who haven’t had a taste of the good life. As the late “Marvelous” Marvin Hagler once said: “It’s tough to get out of bed to do road work at 5am when you’ve been sleeping in silk pyjamas.”

(I believe Marvelous would be OK if I suggested it’s also tough to get out of bed to do 5am road work if your net worth is more than the GDP of Greece.)

In previous eras, feuding billionaires would simply settle this the old-fashioned way, with a Gulfstream time trial to Bozeman, followed by a potato sack race at Herb Allen’s Sun Valley conference.

It was civilised, and it always ended with a handshake, and the loser buying the winner a Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton.

A cage fight is an aggressive turn. I guess it’s partly due to Zuckerberg’s dive into jujitsu, where the Facebook boss has been photographed tangling on the mats.

This martial arts foray seems to intrigue Musk, though the Tesla/Twitter/Space X kingpin has acknowledged he’s not exactly match-ready, tweeting: “I have this great move that I call “The Walrus,” where I just lie on top of my opponent and do nothing.”

The meme-crazed Musk doesn’t mind an inexplicable stunt — he once announced his dog was the new CEO of Twitter. He also bought Twitter. This is why I think he’s playing, giving the media an easy, lazy headline in the summer silly season. (Thanks?)

Then I fear we’re hours away from seeing footage of Musk training with the MMA legend Georges St-Pierre. Remember: Musk does know Joe Rogan, who’s got all these guys on speed dial. We’ll get an Instagram Reel of Zuckerberg working out in a meat locker, Rocky-style, throwing jabs at a frozen side of A5 graded Kobe Wagyu.

Maybe this idea is more apt than I’m seeing. Maybe the sweet science of fighting has a good deal in common with the mortal combat of Silicon Valley.

Both are ruthless, winner-take-all worlds that believe they’re the centre of the universe. Both trades have their household names, has-beens, and up-and-comers ready to disrupt the planets. Both environments are full of gassy hype that occasionally delivers.

(By the way, I asked an AI prototype who would win a Zuckerberg vs. Musk fight, and it sagely did all the calculations within seconds, and informed me: no one. It also told me, with supreme confidence, that the sport of boxing was invented in 2013 by Bobby Valentine in a gym in Greenwich, Conn.)

Right now, this feels flimsy. They’re nowhere near prepared. Musk and Zuck would have to agree on a catch weight. They’d have to land on a glove size. Zuckerberg’s jujitsu hobby is nice, but how is his striking? Who’s schooling him in wrestling? Musk needs a total rebuild. He can’t rely on “The Walrus.”

Let’s do a hypothetical. Let’s say we give both Musk and Zuckerberg two years with unlimited access to the best facilities, trainers, nutritionists and medical advisers — wait, why am I acting like these zillionaires don’t have all this stuff already?

But what if we gave them both time — real time, to work with top-tier specialists, to get trained and ripped before putting them in the octagon? What would that fight look like?

Would it be good?

Come on! It would be terrible! Are you kidding me? It would look like a fight for four seconds and then it would look like two rich Dads slowly grappling on the deck of a superyacht for the last bottle of sparkling Voss.

It would be the saddest sporting event you’ve ever seen. It would be the saddest sporting event I’ve ever seen, too — and I have watched the New York Mets this season.

So no, absolutely not, I don’t think Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are going to fight. Until they do.

— Wall Street Journal