Let The Rich Babies Fight!

If Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg want to beat each other silly, who are we to stop them?... Unless...

(Carina Johansen/NTB/AFP via Getty; Kenzo Tribouillard /AFP via Getty)

It’s a cruel twist of fate that puts one of the most worthwhile, satisfying things a human being can do—punching a billionaire in the face—wholly out of reach for anyone who isn’t themselves a billionaire already. That, unfortunately, is the hand we’ve been dealt in this life, knowing full well that we’ll almost certainly never get the opportunity to feed a billionaire a well-deserved knuckle sandwich without first having to become a billionaire ourselves, thereby creating a self-perpetuating paradox etc etc etc you get the picture.

In a perfect world, the right to bloody a billionaire would be something awarded to the best and brightest of us all. A firefighter saves a family of five and their labradoodle from a 5-alarm blaze? He gets three minutes to absolutely wreck one of the Ricketts on prime-time television. High schooler scores a perfect 1600 on the SATs? Suit up, Bernie Marcus, it’s your turn in the octagon. Anyone who wants should be allowed to open an app and order a Sackler delivered to their location for a robust ass-kicking before a drone arrives and helicopters them to their next appointment.

What if we mandated an annual billionaire rumble—a Great Outdoor Fight for the ultra-wealthy—with 50% of their fortunes on the line? Winner keeps half of what he had, and the rest of the pot goes toward something worthwhile like, I dunno... universal healthcare or free college tuition or fixing some bridges, I guess? I’m just spitballing here, and besides, I’m more of a “big picture” guy to begin with.

In any case, that’s a perfect world. But I’m a realist, and I’ll take what I can get. That’s why I’m hoping against hope that the proposed UFC fight between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg goes ahead as promised.

A Very Bad Billionaire getting the absolute snot beaten out of him by another Very Bad Billionaire isn’t ideal, but hey, you take what you can get, right? And no, it doesn’t matter why these clowns want to fight. I’m sure it has something to do with the very serious issue of who thinks they have a bigger dick, or who never got enough love as a child. The explanation isn’t important here. What matters is that we do everything in our power to get these two terrible people into a steel cage with one another, and just let ‘er rip.

Elon Musk / Twitter

Mark Zuckerberg / Instagram

Picture it: Meticulously manicured fists colliding against baby soft cheeks… a splattering of blood worth more than the combined value of your home and the homes of everyone you know … maybe one of them suffers permanent brain damage (beyond the requisite amount that comes with simply being a billionaire) … Elon’s overprotective mommy weeping on the sideline while Zuck pulverizes his spleen into a paste with the unblinking efficiency of a Cyberdyne Systems Series 800…

Clearly, both of these sleazoids want to fight. Or, at least, want to act like they do. I have no doubt that Zuckerberg thinks he would dominate Elon in the ring, and I’d be willing to believe that Elon is delusional enough to think he could hold his own against someone younger, fitter, and better-trained than he is. Both men are constitutionally incapable of accepting their own limitations when it comes to everything from hand-to-hand combat to living on Mars to giving virtual reality people a pair of legs. To be a billionaire is, at its core, to be so overconfident in your own meager abilities that the only way to experience reality as the rest of us live it is if someone literally beats it into you.

Both Elon and Mark have made millions of people’s lives demonstratively worse on a scale never before seen on planet Earth. There’s little chance of putting their respective genies back in their bottles, so the least they can do—the least that they owe us — is to pummel one another senseless for our amusement. It’s either that or let one of us do it for them.