Elon Musk won’t fight Mark Zuckerberg in a ‘cage match’ – because he knows he would lose | Elon Musk

Never challenge anyone to a fight. Not even if you think you will win. Especially not if you think you will win. To break this commandment is to invite the wrath of all universal karma upon your head. It is engaging in the madness of pride, breaking the ban on violence and setting yourself up as a poster boy to “get what happens to you”. Typically, people who move forward in defiance of this wisdom only do so because they are spoiled, poisoned brats who can only learn things the hard way.

Having $200 billion only makes all those toxic traits more powerful. But unlike most things, money can’t protect you from the consequences of that particular mistake.

Elon Musk, who publicly challenged fellow tech billionaire Mark Zuckerberg to a cage match earlier this summer and has spent the time doing everything but fighting ever since, is a man with all the pitiful traits necessary for the game. encourage humiliation. Ensconced in a fabulous wealth bubble, he has become too drunk on his own genius and makes the mistake of assuming that his success in business will turn into success in physical confrontation.

Those who are used to watching their net worth grow into the billions without lifting a finger are likely to mistakenly believe that winning a fight will also take little effort. At the same time, Musk – like many wealthy men – has a natural desire to prove his worth in a way that no one can claim is due to his money alone. It can be nice to have life on a silver platter, but it tends to erode the sense of true accomplishment that we all so deeply crave.

Indeed, Musk is just a richer (and softer) version of a familiar guy: the white-collar brawler, who drops into a fight room with the goal of becoming a real man. But while the average stockbroker training for an amateur boxing match after work can, at least, take the honest path to humility that comes with all the black eyes, busted lips, and slow emergence of knowing that you’re not as good at something as you imagined, Musk won’t reap any of those moral benefits.

Instead, he sought to wallow in the shallow waters of the pseudo-macho pool: rushing off with big talk about a fight, screaming at full volume about how he had big plans to win, and never, never, bathed in pain and humiliation. the sweat needed to do it. He’s the insecure kid who taunts an angry dog ​​from the safe side of a fence. In his desperation for attention, he never considers what might happen if the door is opened.

Fights can reveal a person’s character. That would be Musk’s worst fear. As frivolous as it all was, it totally fits a life spent acting like a selfish brat and getting away with it. He is a man who is a certified illegal syndicate breaker despite having more money than almost anyone on earth. He’s also a man who bought Twitter for $30 billion more than it was worth and then used the company just to show how easily he can be tricked into falling for conspiracy theories and not funny memes. Neither a statesman nor a business genius, Musk is graceless enough to covet public approval of his manhood, but too cowardly to deserve it. Scientists couldn’t imagine a man more likely to be whipped in a fair fight.

This of course is why Musk will never allow himself to be in a fair fight. It was obvious from the start. His go-to opponent, blank-eyed Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, is another familiar guy in the gyms: the inhumanly driven data nerd, the type of person who tracks workouts in spreadsheets and chases the workout physics with the same unwavering devotion as writing code. It’s possible to complain about the disturbing lack of joy of this type of person, but the relevant point here is that the Zuckerberg robot would be guaranteed to absolutely dominate a squeaky, petulant Musk in the cage.

While Zuckerberg sought to have the fight legitimately scheduled and sanctioned, Musk walked around saying what a great sight it should be, then suggested doing it in a back yard. This sort of thing – talking out loud about tangential issues, claiming impossible ground rules, showing up in places where you know your opponent won’t be – is the familiar behavior of someone who doesn’t want to show anyone that he’s terrified of getting hit. in the face.

Never mind how long this embarrassing cycle of Internet bragging lasts. Musk will never win a real fight. He doesn’t have to fight for anything in his own life, and therefore he doesn’t understand what a real fight is. East. He thinks it’s about standing in front of a big crowd and drinking in the glory. He thinks it’s a path to male validation.

He’s too warped with wealth and stunted with immaturity to understand that a fight isn’t about winning, it’s about doing something. hard. Something for which there is no shortcut. The will to suffer, to lose, is what gives it its value. Ironically, if Musk could experience the purifying ego death that fighting can bring, he would lose his infatuation with the spectacle of it all.

Unfortunately for all of us, the richest man in America is not built like that. It’s a shame. If he was, he could use all his money and power for good. Instead, he just uses it to degrade in new ways. His whole personality is a demonstration of the fact that sometimes it can do a person a lot of good to get your ass kicked.