NEW YORK - The will-they-or-won’t-they drama between Mr Elon Musk and Mr Mark Zuckerberg over a potential “cage fight” appeared to end with a whimper on Sunday, as Mr Zuckerberg said that Mr Musk’s delays and excuses had rendered the discussion moot.

In a post to his nascent social networking platform Threads, Mr Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, wrote, “I think we can all agree Elon isn’t serious and it’s time to move on.” He included the hint of a taunt: “If Elon ever gets serious about a real date and official event, he knows how to reach me.”

Mr Zuckerberg’s message seemingly ended the suspense around a stranger-than-fiction summer of tension between the technology titans. Less than two months ago, Mr Musk mused that he was “up for a cage match”. That was just before Instagram, owned by Meta, introduced Threads as a competitor to Mr Musk’s Twitter (now renamed X).

Whether or not he was serious at the time, intermediaries between the men began sketching out the contours of a match. Both executives continued to fan the flames; Mr Zuckerberg posted photographs of himself shirtless in training, and Mr Musk said in posts on X that the event could happen in Italy.

As is common with Mr Musk, momentum towards a match came in spurts. In posts, he said the date of the fight was “in flux” because he needed an MRI scan of his neck and back.

Last Friday, Mr Musk posted that the fight would be managed by the two men’s foundations, and that he had spoken to the Italian government about a location. He did not list a date, saying only that he needed “minor surgery” to address his shoulder and ribs that he said would involve a recovery of several months.

Mr Zuckerberg, in his Sunday post on Threads, wrote: “I’m going to focus on competing with people who take the sport seriously.” NYTIMES