Dana White has reopened one of the strangest near-misses in recent fight history: the proposed Elon Musk vs. Mark Zuckerberg matchup. Speaking after UFC Vegas 119, the UFC president said the talks were real and advanced, but one venue demand changed the math in a hurry. According to White, the Colosseum in Rome was the one place that stood in the way.
White described the situation in direct terms. “It’s impossible, because negotiating the deal with Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, that was real,” he said. He added that he was “literally in my backyard for two weeks negotiating that fight,” which gives a clearer picture of how seriously the UFC treated the idea at the time.
Dana White says the Colosseum cost stopped Elon Musk vs. Mark Zuckerberg fight
The issue, White said, was the venue fee. “The Colosseum wanted something like $150 million to do it there,” he said, before explaining where that money was meant to go. In his telling, the money would have been placed into a fund tied to restoring historic locations across Italy, which made the ask far different from a standard site fee for an arena or stadium card.
That figure also explains why White framed the venue itself as the deciding factor. “The Colosseum would take Zuckerberg fighting Musk to happen, because those two are gonna have to put up the money for the Colosseum,” he said. He then left the door open for the concept in typical promoter fashion: “Anybody that wants to put up the money for UFC to fight in the Colosseum, I’m in.”
The Rome angle has been part of the story for years. In June 2023, TMZ reported that an Italian government official had contacted Zuckerberg about staging the fight at the Colosseum, and that both Zuckerberg and Musk liked the idea. The same report said the two sides were negotiating with White daily, while practical issues like the size difference between the two tech billionaires remained part of the discussion.
TMZ noted in 2023 that large events have not been staged inside the ancient amphitheatre in the modern era, and that only limited temporary seating would be possible. That makes White’s $150 million figure easier to understand, especially if the arrangement was tied to preservation funding rather than a standard rental agreement.
Why Musk vs. Zuckerberg never reached fight week, White has now given the simplest answer available. The UFC could negotiate the matchup, the participants had interest, and the setting was famous enough to sell itself. The problem was paying Colosseum money for a one-off spectacle.
