Recently, Twitter owner Elon Musk mustered up the courage to bring up the topic of ‘cage match’ involving Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg. It makes for a great tweet but did he think it through because Zuck didn’t back down and used the might of Instagram Story to suggest that he is on for a match. All this over Project 92, which is an unannounced Instagram project that will reportedly take on Twitter. If an MMA cage fight series ensues in Silicon Valley, who will win?
Jeff Bezos
The buff founder of Amazon knows only one way to walk — flash his biceps and show how pec-tacular he is to the point you end up ordering his wardrobe on Amazon. From dorky to poster boy for Silicon Valley, the 59-year-old’s transformation has touched the lives of a raft of entrepreneurs to make fitness a status symbol. No longer in the thick of day-to-day operations at Amazon, he spends most of his time with fiancé Lauren Sanchez on their superyacht. For his chiselled look, the man needs to thank one of his best acquisition decisions ever — Whole Foods in 2017; it sparked a change in diet.
Cage match punch power: 8/10
Elon Musk
Fwapada dapada fwapada dapada. That could be the sound of Elon Musk punching away at a speed bag but in all probability, it’s the sound of his mouth punching away at the world around him. Internet’s greatest troll likes to work on the musculus orbicularis oris, which has once made him say that as a child he had trained in a few forms of martial arts. Last year, he revealed that he was practising intermittent fasting and had lost 20 pounds. The only problem with the richest man in the world is that he doesn’t like to exercise. That is where his mouth and Twitter army come in. But he needs to be careful. Even if he forces the over 300 million monthly active users on Twitter to support him, Mark Zuckerberg can do the same with 2.9 billion monthly active users on Facebook.
Cage match punch power: 7/10
Mark Zuckerberg
He has been jabbing critics for long and if push comes to shove, Mark Zuckerberg can bulge his forearms to pack a deadly punch. He is — what Garfield would call — completely shredded and can easily perform stunts alongside Tom Cruise. Recently he spoke at the top of his Instagram voice that he had done the Murph Challenge, a Memorial Day workout and fund-raiser named for the Navy SEAL officer Michael P. Murphy. It featured a mile run, 100 pull-ups, followed by 200 push-ups, followed by 300 squats and then another mile of running, all the time wearing a 20-pound vest. The new Rambo? He took up Brazilian jujitsu during the pandemic and he can run five kilometres in under 20 minutes. We wish that the 39-year-old spent this much effort to think out of the box and make his social media platforms more engaging.
Cage match punch power: 10/10
Sundar Pichai
P. Sundararajan has spent enough time at IIT Kharagpur spinning his magic at examinations and also around his girlfriend Anjali (later his wife). Though he has never mentioned it, we wouldn’t be surprised if one of his friends had ever gifted him the cassette featuring Anjan Dutt’s, well, immortal line Para-ee dhukle thang khora kore debo. As the boss of Alphabet and Google he believes that only a calm mood can make a day feel successful. Not a fighter, Pichai is a lover of innovations. And to steep his thoughts, a few cups of tea wake him up and not the thought of hitting the gym. He has a unique advantage — the AI power his company harnesses and that can make him win the battle and war with clever planning. A leader in the AI race, his nimble frame is necessary to make him maintain the winning distance. The only drawback is that he has to depend on the Google Pixel Watch and Fitbit for fitness tips. Duh!
Cage match punch power: 4/10
Tim Cook
The Apple CEO is constantly lunging forward to make the profit curve of his company aim north. He may look like someone who appreciates throwing a foam-rubber through a hoop on the wall but the leader of a multi-trillion-dollar company has his priorities straight — wake up before 4am, read mails and then spend an hour at the gym, all the time wearing the world’s most popular smartwatch… the one made by his company. He and Tom Hanks would get along well — instead of bulges on every part of the body, they would sit around having a couple of cups of coffee and plan how to change the world with environmental-friendly projects. The man at the helm of Apple Park doesn’t need a run through any other park. Let the man punch with his ideas rather than his fist.
Cage match punch power: 5/10
Satya Nadella
The meaning of leading an adventurous lifestyle involves watching cricket, reading a few books and remembering what his teachers told him during his Hyderabad days. He knows the magic behind the word ‘jugaad’ and he has given Microsoft a unique direction to the point that it has taken the artificial intelligence race mainstream. Gym? He spends 30-40 minutes running, followed by breakfast and coffee. He also knows the beauty of waking up at 7am and calling it a night not before 11am. The only exercise he is now getting involves putting AI left, right and centre of Windows customers.
Cage match punch power: 4/10