In the potential battle of the billionaires between Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, it appears as if New Zealand’s famed City Kickboxing gym has chosen a side.
On Tuesday, UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya and featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski posted photos to Instagram following a training session alongside a surprisingly fit Zuckerberg. In the comments of the post, the Meta CEO called it “an honor” to train with two of the best two pound-for-pound fighters in the sport.
It wasn’t the first time for Volkanovski. The featherweight champ, who successfully defended his title for the fifth time this past Saturday with a third-round stoppage of Yair Rodriguez, previously trained with Zuckerberg in February as part of a showcase of the Metaverse. Speaking recently on The MMA Hour, Volkanovski said he believes the much-discussed Zuckerberg vs. Musk bout actually takes place with the help of UFC president Dana White.
Volkanovski also likes Zuckerberg’s chances of coming out on top.
“I think it’s going to happen. And I’m telling you, Zuck’s competitive,” Volkanovski said.
“We know he’s already competed in jiu-jitsu, and he’s a pretty athletic. He get in there and I guess loves challenging himself, and this is going to be a challenge, something new, something exciting. And I think it could happen. Get me on that card though. I want to be on that card. I’ll help corner and be on that card as well.”
“He’s well-rounded,” Volkanovski added of Zuckerberg. “Like I said, he does it all. He does the striking and then he does the grappling. I think he’s compete — obviously he does a little bit more, he’s probably a lot more competitive on the ground. You’ve got to be a little bit more careful on the feet, especially with these clever guys, they don’t want to be sparring and getting punched in the head, especially with the brains that they have. So I think they’re going to do a lot more grappling, so he’s going to have a lot more experience grappling, because that’s something that he can obviously be a bit more competitive with.”
Considering that retired UFC legend Georges St-Pierre recently posted training photos alongside Musk, it appears as if the battle lines in the MMA world have already begun to be drawn for the potential matchup.