Chael Sonnen believes that a potential UFC fight between billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk could generate over 25 million pay-per-view buys and become the highest-grossing pay-per-view in fight promotion history.
Chael Sonnen, “The American Gangster,” is fully supportive of the potential battle between billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. Well-versed in the ingredients that make for a blockbuster pay-per-view, dating back to his two-fight spectacular with UFC Hall of Famer Anderson Silva, Sonnen is confident that if Zuckerberg, Musk, and UFC President Dana White are all serious about staging a Zuckerberg vs. Musk fight on the UFC’s platform, it will become the highest-grossing pay-per-view in the history of fight promotion. Sonnen said, “You could for sure do 10 million-plus [pay-per-view buys]. But you could be closer to 20 and 25 [million pay-per-view buys], because what I would predict is both of their companies would start some kind of a digital arm. So all of a sudden, I believe that Twitter would be hosting pay-per-views, and I believe Facebook would, as well. Now you’re talking 25 million views here. That’s insane, what I just said. You could do that if the business shifted and changed a little bit. Sure you could.”
The Zuckerberg-Musk fight gained traction this past week after Musk challenged Meta CEO to a cage match on social media, to which Zuckerberg quickly accepted. White immediately offered the UFC’s support for the potential bout, which Sonnen sees as a brilliant move. “The fact that one billionaire wants to fight another billionaire and somebody will call a third billionaire for permission — like, I don’t really know where that comes from, but I’ve got to give Dana credit here,” Sonnen said. “There’s no other promoter that can even come to the table now. It’d be weird. Those two either fight in UFC or they don’t fight at all, I think we can agree on that. And that really was a strategic move by Dana.”
Sonnen adds that Zuckerberg and Musk could film the fight on their iPhone and put it on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook, attracting billions of viewers. He appreciates White’s willingness to collaborate on such a spectacle, stating, “It would be rude of him to not bring it to us.” White has not lost his enthusiasm for the match, recently stating that it would be “the biggest fight in the history of the world” and highlighting Zuckerberg’s passion for Brazilian jiu-jitsu and MMA.
While White has faced criticism for his eagerness to be involved in an obvious circus fight between two middle-aged tech CEOs with no backgrounds in professional fighting, Sonnen gives White a pass. According to Sonnen, the UFC allows for a “fun” fight every 10 years, and he believes this highly-publicized matchup fits that bill.