The Zuckerberg-Musk Co-Main Was a Dolphin Joke. Jake Paul Beat Mike Tyson, Then Anthony Joshua Broke His Jaw
The dolphin was never going to eat the walrus. The line was a joke, published by a jiu-jitsu site in the hours when March 31 in the United States was already April 1 in Europe, and it traveled farther than the site’s usual tournament recaps because it borrowed two names people already wanted to see swing at each other.
On March 31, 2024, BJJ Eastern Europe ran a story headlined as if a promoter had confirmed a co-main event. Jake Paul would face Mike Tyson on Netflix on July 20. Before that, the piece said, Mark Zuckerberg would fight Elon Musk under amateur mixed-martial-arts rules: three five-minute rounds, headgear, no elbows on the ground, no heel hooks, and 14-ounce gloves. Betting lines were quoted at minus 200 for Zuckerberg and plus 150 for Musk. Musk, the item said, declined comment. Zuckerberg supposedly answered, “You think you’re going to come out here and be a walrus but you don’t realize I am a dolphin. And I’m going to eat you alive.” Writer Emil Fischer’s byline sat under it. Nobody from Netflix, Most Valuable Promotions, the UFC, or either billionaire’s office ever put that bout on a contract.
The timing is the tell. The page stamp reads March 31, 2024. The site is based in Europe. By the time American fight Twitter screenshotted the dolphin line, it was April Fools’ Day where the story was written. The AEGIS Alliance flagged that clock difference when the post first circulated. It is worth repeating, because the gag is still indexed as if it were a fight announcement. It was not. There was no headgear order, no glove maker, and no dolphin.
The cage match that was almost real, and still never happened
The joke worked because a real negotiation had already collapsed. In June 2023 Musk replied to a suggestion that he and Zuckerberg settle a feud in a cage with “I’m up for a cage match if he is lol.” Zuckerberg, who had been training Brazilian jiu-jitsu long enough to earn a blue belt and win a local tournament, answered in the register of Khabib Nurmagomedov: send me location. Dana White called it the biggest fight in the history of the world and talked, later, about the Colosseum. Georges St-Pierre’s name was floated as a coach for Musk. The AEGIS Alliance covered both ends of that summer, including the moment Zuckerberg told Musk to send him a location and the report that St-Pierre might train Musk.
It never got to a cage. Zuckerberg tore a knee in training and said he would rather compete with real fighters when he was healthy. Musk’s interest, which had started with “lol,” did not survive contact with a date, a weight, or a commission. By the spring of 2024 the billionaire bout was a meme people still half-believed, which is exactly the condition an April Fools post needs. BJJ Eastern Europe did not invent the feud. It invented a co-main event, a rule set, a price, and a marine-mammal insult, then stepped back.
The half of the card that was actually booked
The Tyson half was not a gag. On March 7, 2024, Netflix and Most Valuable Promotions announced that Paul, the YouTuber who had turned influencer boxing into a business he co-owns, would meet the former undisputed heavyweight champion at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, on July 20. Tyson suffered an ulcer flare on a plane. The date moved to November 15, 2024. Two-minute rounds, eight of them, replaced the standard three-minute championship distance. Tyson was 58. Paul was 27. They weighed 228.4 and 227.2 pounds. A sellout crowd of about 72,300 watched a former champion who could still flash a right hand and a younger man who spent long stretches not trying to take his head off.
The judges scored it 80-72, 79-73, and 79-73 for Paul. His record moved to 11-1. Tyson’s moved to 50-7, with two no-contests still on the old ledger and 44 knockouts that this night did not add to. Paul said afterward that he did not feel Tyson’s power and that he had taken it easier than he might have, because he “didn’t want to hurt someone that didn’t need to be hurt.” He also said he was trying to hurt him. Both sentences made the broadcast. Tyson, distressingly to people who remember his first retirement, talked about fighting again and mentioned Logan Paul. Viewers spent part of the night staring at buffering wheels. Netflix’s first live boxing broadcast was a technical gamble as much as a sporting one.
The audience number became its own fight. Netflix said the bout reached an average-minute audience of 108 million worldwide, peaked at 65 million concurrent streams, and drew about 38 million concurrent streams in the United States, with the U.S. figure compiled with help from the advertising firm TVision. Those are company figures. They were not an independently audited Nielsen rating of the kind attached to a Super Bowl or a championship bout on linear television. Sixty-five million people watching at the same moment is still an enormous live event. Treating 108 million as a settled measurement, the way a gate receipt or a punch count is settled, overclaims what the streamer actually published.
Then a real heavyweight broke the sequel
Paul kept selling Netflix nights. On December 19, 2025, at Miami’s Kaseya Center, former two-time heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua stopped him in the sixth round. Netflix later put the average-minute audience at 33 million globally and said the card was the highest-grossing boxing gate in that arena’s history. Paul left with a broken jaw and a record of 12-2. Joshua, who had been knocked out by Daniel Dubois at Wembley in September 2024, moved to 29-4. The Florida commission took criticism for sanctioning the mismatch. Paul, talking to Front Office Sports in July 2026, answered the older complaint about Tyson instead. “I brought boxing and combat sports to Netflix and had the most-viewed sporting event streamed ever,” he said. “And I don’t think it’ll ever be broken.” He added that it is easier to hate the person who fought the old champion than to count the households.
Set the three events in a line and the April Fools post is the only one that required a reader to check a time zone. The 2023 cage match was a public negotiation between two of the richest men alive, egged on by the most powerful promoter in mixed martial arts, and it died of logistics and a knee. The Tyson bout was a licensed prizefight with judges, a referee, a stadium, and a stream that bent under its own weight. The Joshua bout was the correction: a smaller audience, a real heavyweight, and a jaw that did not survive the sixth round. None of those nights included headgear, 14-ounce gloves, or a dolphin.
The gag is still the page a lot of people land on, because the headline was written to be believed for an afternoon. That is the media trick worth keeping in view. A combat-sports blog can draft a rule set, invent odds, and put words in a billionaire’s mouth, and the words will outlive the disclaimer if the disclaimer is only a date stamp. Zuckerberg and Musk were never the co-main event of Mike Tyson versus Jake Paul. Jake Paul was the main event, then he was the man Anthony Joshua walked through, and the cage match that started with a laughing emoji never got a referee. The original gag is still on BJJ Eastern Europe. The licensed fight is documented on the public record of Paul versus Tyson. Odd-news neighbors of this one live in The AEGIS Alliance’s Odd News file and the broader News section.
