Topline
UFC CEO Dana White claimed he was actually working on the proposed cage fight between billionaire Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and trillionaire SpaceX chief Elon Musk while the two feuded, and even inquired how much it would cost to hold an event at the Colosseum in Rome.
Key Facts
White said to reporters Saturday night the proposed fight was “real,” insisting he spent two weeks negotiating an event that could have taken place at the Colosseum.
White said the ancient Roman stadium “wanted something like $150 million to do it there,” which would have been paid into a fund for restoring other historic sites in Italy.
The UFC CEO made the comments after he was asked if he would ever try to host a mixed martial arts fight at the site, and noted that “anybody that wants to put up the money for UFC to fight in the Colosseum, I’m in.”
White made the comments after a UFC event in Las Vegas on Saturday night—about one week after promoting UFC Freedom 250, the historic mixed martial arts event on the White House lawn that reportedly cost about $60 million.
Key Background
Musk challenged Zuckerberg to a cage fight in 2023, as the rivalry between the two tech moguls turned heated. Musk seemingly challenged Zuckerberg to the fight in June, just before Meta introduced Threads, the company’s challenger to the Musk-owned X, formerly Twitter. Musk spent the next few weeks taunting Zuckerberg with crude jokes, but the Meta CEO reportedly took the proposed fight very seriously. Zuckerberg, an avid martial arts fan who had previously competed in jiu jitsu tournaments, was training with several former UFC champions, including middleweight champion Israel Adesanya and featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski. It’s unclear when White began trying to negotiate a deal for a fight in the Colosseum—back in June 2023, Musk suggested the Vegas Octagon as a possible venue for the fight. Days later, he suggested “some chance fight happens in Colosseum,” and in August, he claimed he spoke with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to host the fight at “an epic location.” Despite all the bluster, the highly anticipated fight never actually materialized. By August, Zuckerberg said he thought Musk wasn’t “serious” about the fight and wouldn’t commit to a date for the bout.
Forbes Valuation
Both Musk and Zuckerberg have grown their fortunes since the public spat. Zuckerberg is now worth about $198.2 billion, up from about $103 billion that summer. Musk was worth about $246 billion at the same time, according to Forbes estimates. The tech mogul’s fortune has exploded since then, with the recent SpaceX initial public offering minting him as the first trillionaire in human history. Forbes estimates Musk’s net worth at $1.2 trillion as of Sunday afternoon.