Twitter and Meta bosses Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg challenged each other on their social media and invited each other to physically compete in a cage in the style of martial arts fights. Shortly after Elon Musk took over Twitter, Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, announced plans to launch a similar text-based social platform that would directly compete with Twitter.

Since this announcement, the founder of Tesla has multiplied the messages on Twitter against Mark Zuckerberg. The climax came a few days ago, when Elon Musk posted on his account, “I’m ready for a cage fight, LOL”, referring to the cage in which MMA fights are held.

Mark Zuckerberg, who is himself a martial artist and posts fight videos, replied on Instagram on Wednesday with a screenshot of Elon Musk’s message, followed by the caption: “Send me the location. The trade sparked a flurry of reactions on social media, as well as bets on the potential winner, with Mark Zuckerberg emerging as the clear favourite.

The two tech giants have clashed for years over their opposing views of the world, from politics to artificial intelligence. But the animosity between them has escalated further with the arrival of a possible direct competitor for Twitter. Elon Musk bought the social network for 44 billion dollars before carrying out massive layoffs in the company, and reopening the platform to conspiratorial accounts, resulting in a significant loss of advertising revenue. Present in Paris a few days ago for the Paris VivaTech international fair, the boss of Tesla however indicated that advertising revenues were back.