People enjoy watching two people fight each other that have no business fighting. That's why Fox had a short-lived hit with Celebrity Boxing where morbid curiosity caused people to tune in to see has-beens and people clinging to the last vestiges of fame beat each other up.
Nobody needs to know if Danny Bonaduce can win a boxing match with Donny Osmond, or whether Todd Bridges might take down Vanilla Ice, but it's a spectacle when sort of famous people need money enough (or the spotlight) enough to take real punches to the famous for a few dollars and a tiny bit of limelight.
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Neither Meta Platforms (META) -) CEO Mark Zuckerberg nor Tesla CEO (TSLA) -) Elon Musk needs money. Both are billionaires who could have the Vanilla Ice's of the world airlifted to their private yacht on a whim. In reality, these two have so much money that they might be able to do that with Elton John, Beyonce, or pretty much any star.
These are men for whom money has largely lost all meaning. Zuckerberg, for his part, has never really seemed to care about fame either. He's not a limelight guy and he rarely speaks in public.
Musk, however, is sort of the opposite. It often seems like he has some sort of curse where if enough people stop talking about him he disappears. Both Musk and Zuckerberg do live in that weird billionaire world where few people understand your life and new thrills may be hard to come by.
If you can do anything you want, like maybe eat a panda or own your own spaceship, well, it might take a lot to get excited about anything. That may be why both men seem to actually like the idea of fighting each other in a mixed martial arts (MMA) match inside a UFC octagon
That sounds preposterous -- like Joe Biden and Donald Trump deciding their differences in a dance-off -- but UFC President Dana White says it could actually happen.
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White Calls Billionaire Fight
White is a promoter in the grand tradition of Don King, and Vince McMahon. He's larger than life and he can sell sand in the desert or snow in a blizzard. White, along with his former partners the Fertitta brothers, took UFC/MMA from it being seen as a barbaric no rules secret fight club to a regulated sport.
As UFC's boss, White has generally avoided novelty fights. Yes, he promoted fights with disgraced NFL player Greg Hardy and way-too-old-to-start-fighting pro wrestler Phil "CM Punk" Brooks, but both those men were true athletes.
White could easily promote fights with whatever two "Real Housewives" hate each other or pit any number of sort of famous musicians who have a beef in the octagon, but he has never done that. Zuckerberg and Musk, however, are simply too famous to pass up, and White told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that the fight could happen.
“It’s very real,” White said when asked about the chances such a bizarre spectacle actually comes to fruition as a wry smile slowly formed on his face. “Very real.”
UFC Fights Are Sanctioned
While White brought credibility to UFC by getting athletic states to regulate it as a sport, he has shown a willingness to go around those regulations when needed. That's what he did during the covid pandemic in order to skirt safety regulations.
During that period UFC staged some fights in a sort of island bubble, "Fight Island," and the organization brought its business to states where the rules were lax like Florida and Texas.
"White has indicated he has a date in mind, though it would not be on the UFC 300 card as has been rumored. He has also rightly pointed out that they would be able to find an athletic commission somewhere that would sign off on it, mostly because money talks," the Review-Journal reported.
Zuckerberg and Musk are currently at business odds because Meta (Facebook) has launched a knockoff of Musk's Twitter.
