Elon Musk picks UFC legend to train him for Mark Zuckerberg fight

Former champion Georges St-Pierre is one of two trainers for tech billionaire

Elon Musk has accepted an offer from legendary MMA fighter Georges St-Pierre to train him for his upcoming fight against Mark Zuckerberg.

The two tech billionaires agreed to a “cage match” last week after Mr Musk first proposed a fight following rumours that the Meta boss was working on a new platform to rival Mr Musk’s Twitter.

The UFC Apex centre in Las Vegas will be the likely location of the contest, which has been endorsed by UFC president Dana White.

Mr Zuckerberg already practises martial arts and competed in his first jiu jitsu tournament earlier this year. Mr Musk, by contrast, claims to “almost never work out”, though does have a significant size advantage over his rival.

Former UFC champion St-Pierre, who retired in 2019, is widely considered one of the greatest ever mixed martial artists, having won both the welterweight and middleweight titles.

Addressing Mr Musk on Twitter over the weekend, the retired fighter wrote: “I’m a huge fan of yours and it would be an absolute honour to help you and be your training partner for the challenge against Zuckerberg.”

On Monday evening, Mr Musk replied: “OK, let’s do it.”

The SpaceX, Tesla and Twitter boss revealed that he had a “practice round” with podcaster and jiu jitsu fighter Lex Fridman on Monday evening.

Mr Fridman also sparred with Mr Zuckerberg last week, with a video showing the Facebook founder submitting the black belt with a choke hold.

No date has been set for the fight, though both opponents have spoken to the UFC president about the contest. Mr White said that the pair were “absolutely dead serious” about the bout.

“They both said, ‘Yeah, we’ll do it’. They both want to do it’,” he told TMZ.

“This would be the biggest fight ever in the history of the world. Bigger than anything that’s ever been done. It would break all pay-per-view records... You don’t have to be a fighting fan to be interested in this fight. Everybody would want to see it.”