MUSK VS. THE ZUCKER: THE CAN’T-MISS VEGAS CAGE MATCH OF OUR LIVES

With the cutthroat backdrop of Twitter vs. Threads, the multi-billionaire tech rivals apparently are destined for a throwdown — and the only question is whether we have any reason to root for either

     Think of it in therapeutic terms. If Elon Musk agrees to fight Mark Zuckerberg in a Vegas cage match, with Dana White as the cheeky promoter, we finally could surrender to life itself and undergo our long-overdue societal brain flush. That’s because nothing ever could exceed such a spectacle for gobsmacked asininity — emphasis on the first syllable, ass — and nothing would more aptly define the freaky-deaky American condition approaching the 21st-century quarter pole.

     Other than, of course, a battle royale featuring Trump, DeSantis, Biden and Robert Kennedy Jr. in their underwear. Recalling how Rowdy Roddy Piper once had his trunks yanked down while climbing the cage in a wrestling snafu, I’m imagining the horrifying, moon-faced possibilities here. Then we all could die.

     For now, let’s keep our wits and focus on two of the world’s richest innovators, a pair of man-children who’ve advanced technology at the approximate rate of nauseating us with their personas. The core question: Can there be such a clash of crass without a rooting interest? Musk has messed with Twitter, glorified the genius-as-stoner lifestyle, turned us into a country of Tesla-driving snobs and saddled two of his 10 children with curious names — a son goes by X AE A-Xii (X for short), a daughter goes by Exa Dark Siderael (Y for short) — via a relationship with one-named singer Grimes. As for Zuckerberg, he’ll never totally live down the hoodie-nerd image of inventing Facebook in his Harvard dorm room, denigrating coeds and backstabbing buddies all the way, and distributing a business card with the slogan “I’m CEO … bitch.”

     Their paths, inevitably, have led to the surreal possibility that they’ll kick, scratch and slug the piss out of each other in an organized combat match. What first seemed a silly publicity stunt has evolved into a back-and-forth dare. Musk issued the original challenge on social media, prompting Zuckerberg to contact White and tap into his entrepreneurial expertise. This prompted the UFC huckster, a cad but no fool, to call Musk, who confirmed he wasn’t kidding. Next thing you knew, Zuckerberg was posting the famous war cry of Khabib Nurmagomedov: “send me location.” If you still think it’s a prank, White told the New York Times that he has stayed up “until 12:45 in the morning” talking to them in separate conversations.

     “They both want to do it,” he said.

     Do we want them to do it? Hell, yeah!

     Who needs Patrick Mahomes vs. Joe Burrow, or Shohei Ohtani vs. baseball, or the Saudis vs. America, or LeBron James vs. Time, or Godzilla vs. Kong, when we could have Musk vs. The Zucker? Did Elon actually tweet he’d like it to go down at the Colosseum in Rome? If he visited lately, he’d know it has been rocked by earthquakes and hasn’t been used for entertainment purposes since medieval times, but who doesn’t love the visual of modern gladiators battling to the death? The latest and biggest hook in a years-old rivalry is centered around Zuckerberg’s forced entry into Musk’s social-media zone, with the Threads app debuting last week to more than 70 million sign-ups — the most rapidly downloaded app ever. This prompted celebrities from sports and show business to hail a kinder, gentler way of communicating on a “positive and creative space.”

     “Thread got me feeling good!" Giannis Antetokounmpo wrote on one of his 11 early posts.

     “Just trying to be early to the party,” Tom Brady wrote.

     Suddenly, The Zucker is the mid-life cool kid and Musk is the old-man villain. “This is as good of a start as we could have hoped for!” Zuckerberg wrote on a Threads post. “Feels like the beginning of something special.”

     He couldn’t resist a direct shot at the competition: “It’ll take some time, but I think there should be a public conversation app with 1 billion+ people on it. Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn’t nailed it. Hopefully we will.”

     Those are brawling words. Musk’s ego is having difficulty with this threat to his empire, perhaps sensing his $44 billion investment is encountering trouble when he does the math — 70 million is a tiny fraction of the monthly active users on Instagram, another of Zuckerberg’s Meta babies, and the crossover traffic potential is astounding. Musk and his Twitter attorneys already are in attack mode, accusing Threads in a Wednesday cease-and-desist letter of engaging “in systematic, willful and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property.”

     “Competition is fine, cheating is not,” Musk tweeted Thursday.

     So the only way to resolve this is like men, in the octagon. I’d pay big money to watch, though I’m not certain Musk would land a punch. He’s 13 years older and dozens of pounds heavier than The Zucker, who’s less nerdy these days, having buffed his body and dedicated himself to kickboxing, along with Brazilian jujitsu and other martial arts. It wouldn’t be a Dana White production without a business connection — Meta is airing UFC events on a virtual reality app. No way Musk would agree to that sort of one-way promotion. Prepare for co-casts, then: on Twitter with Elon-biased analysts, another on Threads with a Zuckerberg-centric bent. And somewhere, White will be angling for a pay-per-view fortune. Would ESPN dare shell out the fortune as it lays off big names and tries to help Disney save $5.5 billion?

     Is that even a question? Stephen A. Smith would love to be on the call, and so would Neil Everett. Wait, he was ziggied.

     Summer just started, but the celebrity headlines already are over the top. My e-mail function must have been down when Michael Rubin sent invites to his annual white party. Either that or, closer to the truth, I have a better chance of bringing cocaine into the West Wing than joining the ultra-exclusive Hamptons bash where Brady danced with Kim Kardashian and flirted with models.

     “I definitely needed A LOT of electrolytes today,” Brady wrote the next day, when Rubin declared him “MVP” of the party, which must have disappointed Jay-Z, Beyonce, Justin Bieber, Ben Affleck, Kevin Hart, Kendall Jenner and James Corden, who also was there for some reason.

     One splurge of phantasmagoria is still in play, I’m happy to report. Would they stage Musk vs. Zuckerberg the night before the Super Bowl?

     The term “musk,” for the uninitiated, originated in Sanskrit with the muska of a deer — or scrotum — from which a reddish-brown substance is secreted to create scents in cologne. The Zucker can use that in pre-fight trash talking sessions. Elon can respond with the natural prefix to Zucker. The winner can keep living. The loser should go away and take his app with him.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.