UFC legend Georges St-Pierre to train Elon Musk in preparation for his cage fight with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg

Elon Musk, then the owner of Twitter, accepted Georges St-Pierre’s offer to coach him for his proposed bout with Facebook rival Mark Zuckerberg. St-Pierre is one of the most decorated fighters in UFC history.

On Saturday, the 42-year-old former champion tweeted at Elon Musk, writing, “I’m a huge fan of yours and it would be an absolute honor to help you and be your training partner for the challenge against Zuckerberg.”

Soon after midnight, Musk — who had also received a similar offer from Andrew Tate, the self-styled influencer facing trafficking charges in Romania — announced that he was teaming up with Team GSP.

With two fire emojis, he responded to St-Pierre, “Ok, let’s do it.”

Musk, 51, first floated a “cage fight” with Zuckerberg after Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, revealed plans for a text-based social network to challenge Twitter. When Musk dared him to fight, Zuckerberg famously replied by riffing on Khabib Nurmagomedov’s iconic taunt to Conor McGregor, posting “Send me location.”

Working with coach Dave Camarillo, Zuckerberg had recently thrown himself into mixed martial arts and even won his first amateur Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) tournament. Musk, for his part, claimed some pedigree of his own, telling Joe Rogan he had experience in judo, taekwondo, and Kyokushin karate, and had “briefly practiced Brazilian jiu-jitsu” in his younger years.

Musk tweeted early on Tuesday that he had “done a rehearsal session” with podcaster and BJJ practitioner Lex Fridman, indicating that he had officially begun training.

Fridman also shared a video of himself rolling on the mats with Zuckerberg.

“It’s inspiring to see both Elon and Mark taking on the martial arts journey,” the researcher said, careful not to rank one against the other.

Not everyone was thrilled, however. Musk’s mother, Maye, made her feelings clear when she tweeted at Fridman, “Don’t encourage this match!”

“Actually, I canceled the fight. I haven’t told them yet. But I will continue to say the fight is canceled, just in case…” the model tweeted, and her son replied with a laughing emoji.

How the Showdown Played Out

For all the celebrity coaching offers and training footage, the much-hyped cage fight never materialized. Despite St-Pierre’s involvement and UFC president Dana White’s claim that both men were “dead serious,” the plans unraveled over the following weeks. Musk floated an “epic location” in Italy — even suggesting an ancient-Rome backdrop — before saying he might need surgery on his neck and back and asking to do a casual practice round at Zuckerberg’s home.

On August 13, 2023, Zuckerberg called the whole thing off in a Threads post, declaring that Musk “isn’t serious” and that “it’s time to move on,” adding that he would rather compete against people who took the sport seriously. Musk later said the original challenge had been a joke while blaming Zuckerberg for the bout falling apart. In a February 2025 interview, Dana White confirmed the negotiations had been genuine, saying he had been in talks with the Italian government about staging the fight at the Colosseum in Rome before the deal collapsed.

For the start of this saga, see our report on how Mark Zuckerberg told Elon Musk to “send me location” after the cage-match challenge first went viral.

Watch a recap of how the billionaire feud unfolded below: