Meta’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, is calling out the billionaire owner of X, Elon Musk, for apparently backing away from a “cage match” between the two men, saying it’s “time to move on.”

Since the announcement that Meta would be launching a platform called Threads to compete with X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, Messrs. Musk and Zuckerberg have been publicly feuding.

Mr. Musk threw the first punch in their online back and forth, challenging Mr. Zuckerberg to a “cage match” in early July. Now, it appears he’s looking for a way out.

Last week, Mr. Musk said he would potentially need to get surgery and an MRI before entering the arena. Then he suggested that he had arranged to have the match at “ancient Rome” at an unnamed historical site.

It appears that Mr. Zuckerberg is getting tired of the runaround, though, saying that “Elon won’t confirm a date, then says he needs surgery, and now asks to do a practice round in my backyard instead.”

“I think we can all agree Elon isn’t serious and it’s time to move on. I offered a real date. Dana White offered to make this a legit competition for charity,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. Dana White is the president of Ultimate Fighting Championship, a global mixed martial arts organization.

Mr. Zuckerberg added that his willingness to fight stands if “Elon ever gets serious about a real date and official event.” For now he plans to “focus on competing with people who take the sport seriously.”

Mr. Musk later responded to Mr. Zuckerberg, reacting to a post on X about Mr. Zuckerberg’s post, saying, “He can’t eat at chic fil a because that would be cannibalism.”

Mr. Musk also leaked messages between himself and Mr. Zuckerberg, suggesting that the planning of the potential fight is more of a mess than was already publicly apparent.

In the messages, Mr. Musk asks Mr. Zuckerberg if he wants to do a practice “bout” at Mr. Zuckerberg’s house. Mr. Zuckerberg recently had a UFC-style fighting Octagon constructed at his residence.

Mr. Zuckerberg responded by saying, “If you want to do a real MMA fight, then you should train on your own and let me know when you’re ready to compete.”

“I don’t want to keep hyping something that will never happen, so you should either decide you’re going to do this and do it soon, or we should move on,” Mr. Zuckerberg said.

Mr. Musk responded at 1:17 a.m. that he “will be in Palo Alto on Monday,” once again suggesting that the two men fight at Mr. Zuckerberg’s house.

“I have not been practicing much apart from a brief bout with Lex Fridman today,” Mr. Zuckerberg added.

In saying that he doesn’t want to “keep hyping” the fight that looks less and less likely to happen, Mr. Zuckerberg is addressing a topic that has begun percolating around the coverage of the fight and of Mr. Musk in general.

Some in the social media and Silicon Valley press, like Platformer’s Casey Newton and  Social Media Today’s Andrew Hutchinson, have called the hype around the fight a stunt pulled by Mr. Musk to draw attention to what Mr. Hutchinson called Mr. Musk’s “circus.”

“Whether Musk plans to actually go ahead with the bout at all or not, he has known all along that he’s probably physically unable to take part, so really, it’s another part of the Elon circus, that he uses to eat up media attention, and then deflect that to his various business interests,” Mr. Hutchinson writes.