While Mark Zuckerberg is emerging as a tech champ with the hugely successful launch of his Meta Platform's Threads app to challenge Elon Musk's fledgling Twitter, he exhibited a bizarre flex that nobody was expecting.
It turns out the Zuckster has a buff bod–which we would have never guessed since he is rarely seen with his shirt off and he is presumably spending more time behind the computer screen than at the gym.
But it looks like Zuckerberg was spending a lot of time working on his physique.
Why?
Maybe it's because he is training for that cage match with Twitter CTO Elon Musk after all.
To catch you up to speed, Zuckerberg and Musk have been exchanging barbs online ever since Musk started taunting the Meta CEO ahead of the launch of Threads–Meta's "response to Twitter" that is "sanely run."
Social media users grabbed the popcorn as the two tech giants cast aspersions on each other online.
Their rivalry reached a boiling point when Musk suggested a cage fight would settle the score.
In a tweet, he said of Zuck:
"I'm up for a cage match if he is lol."
From the moment Zuck responded, "Send me location," it was game on.
Last Monday, Musk was seen at a training session with Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fighter Georges St-Pierre–who posted a photo of them after a workout sesh.
And then Zuck said, "Hold my beer."
A week later, Zuck posted a post-training photo on Instagram pictured with UFC champions Israel Adesanya and Alex Volkanovski. The difference between Musk's post-workout pic and Zuck's photo was the fact that all the men in the latter were shirtless.
Here are the images jointly posted by Zuck and Adesanya.
And now the world knows that Zuck is buff.
The internet–particularly Gay Twitter–was thrown for a loop and didn't know how to react to the thirst trap photos.
People placed their bets as to who could emerge as the victor in the supposed cage match.
Spoiler alert: it's Mark Zuckerberg.
People were unraveling for that Threads guy.
Some users still had to take a moment to assess what was reality.
Not everyone was on board with Team Zuck, however.
Zuck is an accomplished jiu-jitsu fighter with gold and silver medals, and Musk said he has had experience in the martial arts, including taekwondo, judo, and Brazillian jiu-jitsu.
While Zuck may appear to have an edge over his challenger, it's still anybody's guess as to who will be the ultimate champion, at least in the ring.
But based on the rapid rise of Threads against Twitter's performance decline–despite Musk bragging about Twitter setting "an all-time record"–it looks like we already have a winner.
@jaketapoer/Bluesky
@BillAckman/Twitter