Israel Adesanya trains with Mark Zuckerberg, sends message for South African rivals

UFC Middleweight Champion Israel Adesanya recently trained a few rounds of mixed-martial arts with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is in the headlines for agreeing to a fight with Elon Musk. Earlier this week, Adesanya dropped a few pictures from his training session with Zuckerberg of them practicing Jiu-Jitsu and kickboxing at his gym. "We both have South Africans to deal with," The Last Stylebender captioned his post. 

[Israel Adesanya in a training session with Mark Zuckerberg; Image: Instagram/@stylebender]

Adesanya here is clearly referring to Zuckerberg's potential opponent Musk who is of South African origin. Prior to this, Adesanya also posted his picture with the Meta CEO and UFC Featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski, who dominantly defended his title against Yair Rodriguez at UFC 290 last Sunday.

[Israel Adesanya (left), Mark Zuckerberg (middle) and Alex Volkanovski (right); Image: Instagram/@stylebender]

The champ also flexed at his next opponent, the South African athlete Dricus Du Plessis. The latter pulled arguably one of the biggest upset victories over former Champion Robert Whittaker on the same night as Volkanovski. With the stunning victory, he is next in line for a shot at the Middleweight belt, which Adesanya reclaimed from the Alex Pereira at UFC 287 in April. 

Zuckerberg, Musk elevate their MMA game

While Zuckerberg is training with UFC champions, Musk too is busy honing his MMA skills with none other than UFC legend and Hall of Famer George St-Pierre aka GSP. Also a former Middleweight and Welterweight champion, GSP shared a picture of his training with Musk.

"He is much stronger than the average man and he is very tough," GSP revealed in a recent interview while sharing his experience of training with Musk. The Tesla CEO also went a few rounds of grappling sessions with MIT scientist and Podcast host Lex Fridman, who is also a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

[GSP (second from the right) shared the picture after a training session with Elon Musk and Lex Fridman (second from left); Image: Instagram/georgestpierre]

Since Musk and Zuckerberg already have a lot on their plates as both are managing multi billion-dollar companies at once, fighting each other in a grudge match is the last thing one would expect. However, UFC President Dana White revealed in June that both men "are dead serious" about their cage fight. White also predicted that their fight would bring in a revenue of over $1 billion, making it the biggest in history, Fortune reported. 

Despite agreements from both billionaires, many believe that calling each other out on social media is nothing more than a gimmick.