the lake
In 2023, Mark Zuckerberg challenged Elon Musk to a cage fight. Elon Musk accepted. This was treated as global news for the better part of a year.
The cage fight has not happened.
Zuckerberg, to his credit, did not let this stop him. He trained. Not in the way a man buys a stationary bike and uses it as a coat rack by February, but seriously, with the kind of seriousness that produces gold medals at actual jiu-jitsu tournaments. (I am not making this up. He entered brackets. He won them.) He began training with UFC fighters. Champions. The people whose job is to end athletic contests in the most efficient manner the rules allow.
Last night, Mark Zuckerberg and UFC Bantamweight Champion Merab Dvalishvili sparred on a floating platform in the middle of Lake Tahoe.
This is where the training has arrived.
They did this on purpose. Someone decided — and there was a decision here, by a human being, probably multiple human beings — that the correct venue for a sparring session between the CEO of Meta and the UFC Bantamweight Champion of the world was a barge in the middle of a lake. Zuckerberg kicked Dvalishvili in first. Dvalishvili then picked Zuckerberg up and put him in the lake. This is described by multiple witnesses as the expected outcome. The lake was the point.
Merab Dvalishvili is the UFC Bantamweight Champion of the world. He is among the most decorated combat athletes on the planet. He was, when he threw Mark Zuckerberg into Lake Tahoe, presumably warming up.
The cage fight with Elon Musk remains unscheduled. Musk, at various points, proposed various venues with varying degrees of seriousness. Zuckerberg responded to all of these with a seriousness that was, in retrospect, somewhat higher than the situation ultimately required. He trained for what turned out to be, so far, a lake.
(The lake was not on any proposed venue list. It was, however, available.)
The non-solution: the training continues. At some point there will be another proposed venue, another announcement, another window in which the fight seems finally to be happening. What is certain is that Merab Dvalishvili will be nearby, and the lake will still be there.