Dana White reveals insane details of Elon Musk vs Mark Zuckerberg UFC fight plan

Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg were legitimately in talks with the UFC to have an MMA fight at the Colosseum.

That’s according to UFC CEO Dana White, who has detailed a surreal two-week negotiation his team had with Rome’s historic arena to have the tech titans fight.

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Zuckerberg, a fighting enthusiast who has trained with many UFC champions, has repeatedly expressed interest in stepping into the cage.

The Meta CEO then broke the internet in 2023 when he agreed to fight Musk, with the latter making the first call, saying he was ‘up for a cage fight’ with Zuckerberg.

However, after months of rumours, talk of the clash happening dwindled when Zuckerberg said Musk wasn’t ‘serious’ about it, adding that it was ‘time to move on.’

‘The Colosseum wanted $150m’

Following the UFC’s spectacular White House show last weekend, White was asked after his promotion’s latest event in Las Vegas on Saturday whether he would consider staging fights in more iconic venues, such as Rome’s Colosseum.

“It’s impossible,” White explained before jumping into details about the Musk vs Zuckerberg clash.

“Because I was negotiating the deal with Zuckerberg and Musk — that was real.

“I was literally in my backyard for two weeks negotiating that fight, and they wanted [it to be in] the Colosseum.

“The Colosseum wanted something like $150m to do it there, which would go into a fund that restores all the iconic places in Italy.

“The Colosseum would take Zuckerberg fighting Musk to happen, because those two were going to put up the money to make the fight happen…

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“Anybody that wants to put up the money for the UFC to fight in the Colosseum, I’m in.”

Aside from Zuckerberg’s claim that Musk wouldn’t commit, there seems to be no other reason why the battle of the tech giants never came to fruition.

The UFC, too, could’ve made it work, having built an entire $60m arena on the South Lawn of the White House in weeks, before Justin Gaethje shocked the world in the main event of the celebratory card.

White’s promotion also staged the first sporting event at Las Vegas’ Sphere in 2024, so you’d think a UFC Colosseum show would be possible.

After all, anything can happen in the modern landscape of the fight game.

Zuckerberg’s UFC rankings

Regardless of whether Zuckerberg gets his wish to fight in the UFC, the 42-year-old is still very much intrinsically involved with MMA’s biggest league.

The UFC committed to a long-term partnership with Meta in 2025, when the company became the promotion’s first fan technology partner.

At the beginning of this year, the two then agreed on a landmark naming rights deal to change the UFC’s Apex name to the Meta Apex.

Furthermore, Meta’s technology is set to become an integral part of the new UFC ranking system.

From Monday, the UFC will begin its transition from a media-voted ranking system to a data-driven approach, and it’s believed Meta’s AI is playing a big part.