Tournament of the tech titans: Over half of Britons think Elon Musk isn’t serious about Zuck fight

The story of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg’s proposed, apparently-cancelled cage match has dragged on for weeks now; the most recent development has seen the Twitter/X owner threaten to show up at the Facebook founder’s house uninvited to fight him.

Data from YouGov Surveys shows that 5% of Britons have heard “a lot” about a proposed cage match between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, with 56% saying they have heard a little: three in five members of the public have heard about it overall (61%).

Among this group, respondents are twice as likely to think Zuckerberg – an MMA hobbyist who has won Brazilian jiu-jitsu tournaments – would prevail over Musk, who recently said his only form of exercise was “picking up [his] kids and throwing them in the air.”

But beyond the question of who would win, only a minority of those who have heard about the cage match think either man was serious about fighting. Again, Musk comes out worse: 56% think the Tesla/SpaceX chief did not genuinely intend to fight Zuckerberg, with just 10% believing the reverse (34% don’t know). When it comes to Zuckerberg, 24% think he was serious about fighting Musk, while 38% think he was not (38% don’t know).

Overall, it’s an unusual situation. As heated as the rivalry between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs was, there was little risk of either man putting the other in a chokehold. So it’s perhaps unsurprising that over half of people who have heard about the mooted fight (55%) think it would reflect poorly on Twitter if it happened, with just 5% thinking it would reflect well on the social media company. For Meta, the numbers are 50% vs. 6%.

YouGov polled 1,000 British adults online on 16-17 August 2023. The survey was carried out through YouGov Surveys: Self-serve. Data is weighted by age, gender, education level, region, and social grade. Learn more about YouGov Surveys: Self-serve.