Israel Adesanya and Mark Zuckerberg sparring. Photo / Instagram
Israel Adesanya and Mark Zuckerberg sparring. Photo / Instagram
Israel Adesanya says he was impressed by Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg’s fighting skills after the pair trained together.
The Kiwi UFC middleweight champion and fellow MMA star Alexander Volkanovski flew to Zuckerberg’s Northern California compound after the UFC 290 event in Las Vegas this month for a sparring session aheadof a rumoured fight between Zuckerberg and arch-rival Elon Musk.
Adesanya, who last week shared photos on social media of himself in the gym alongside Zuckerberg, spoke about the tech guru’s mixed martial arts skills on his YouTube channel.
“Yeah, for the amount of time that he’s been training and the amount of time he trains,” Adesanya said when asked if he was impressed by Zuckerberg.
“Also, I put it on him – I wanted him to feel the pressure of what it will be like to have a bigger man going after him. I wasn’t nice to him. It was kind of like a crash course in fighting, so I was coaching him as we were going along. He is a smart man I’ll tell you, he’s a smart man.”
Adesanya said what impressed him the most was Zuckerberg’s desire to train and learn.
“I was impressed afterwards he would be like, ‘Israel can we go another round’, and I’m like, ‘sure’. And then we’ll sit down afterwards and he’ll be like, ‘can we go another round’. I wasn’t being easy on him and he wanted to go again – I wasn’t expecting that.
“He would fire back. The first strike he threw was a leg kick and it was solid – I was like, ‘okay’. For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction – so you need to feel that kick back as well. I let him kick me, I let him punch me, hit the guard, hit the face sometimes. Basic stuff; I was teaching him the basics. He’s a gamer. I like that. He’s tenacious. He’s like a feisty Jack Russell.”
Talk of a fight between Musk, who owns Twitter, and Zuckerberg came after Musk responded to a tweet last month about the upcoming release of Meta’s Twitter rival Threads.
He took a dig about the world becoming “exclusively under Zuck’s thumb with no other options” – but then one Twitter user jokingly warned Musk of Zuckerberg’s jiu-jitsu training.
“I’m up for a cage match if he is lol,” Musk wrote.
Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta Platforms, soon responded – and appeared to agree to Musk’s proposal.
“Send me location,” Zuckerberg wrote on an Instagram story, which showed a screenshot of Musk’s tweet alongside another user’s response urging the Twitter owner to “start training”.
Musk proposed the Vegas Octagon. He then joked about his fighting skills and workout routine, suggesting that the fight may not be serious.
“I have this great move that I call ‘The Walrus’, where I just lie on top of my opponent and do nothing,” Musk wrote.
It looks like his opponent is not joking around, however.
Meanwhile, UFC president Dana White told TMZ Sports he spoke to the billionaires and said that “both guys are absolutely dead serious about this”.
“They both said, ‘Yeah, we’ll do it’. They both want to do it.”
Whether or not Musk and Zuckerberg actually make it to the ring has yet to be seen – especially as Musk often tweets about action prematurely or without following through. But, even if their cage match agreement is all a joke, the banter gained attention.
Fans also responded quickly to Adesanya’s photos, backing Zuckerberg.
“If Zuck’s training with The Last Style Bender then it’s actually over…” wrote one.
