Elon Musk Challenges Russian President Vladimir Putin To Single Combat, Launching A Bevy Of Memes On Social Media

March 14th, 2022 - 2:13 PM EDT by Aidan Walker

4 comments | Contact Newsroom

Elon Musk's head is photoshopped onto Vladimir Putin's body, which is photoshopped onto a bear whose head is replaced with the head of the Doge dog and Musk's tweet.

Elon Musk, the very-online billionaire and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, issued a tweet early this morning challenging Russian President Vladimir Putin to single combat, with the prize being Ukraine. The words “Vladimir Putin” and “Ukraine” were both written in Cyrillic letters.


Elon Musk’s "reply guys" seized on the opportunity to speculate about what the fight might look like through humorous interpretations and photoshops on Twitter.


Vladimir Putin is famous for his love of the martial art Judo but is significantly older than Musk and also shorter. Given these facts, debate raged online over which man would win the proposed "mono a mono" fight.


Musk was also mocked by some for challenging Putin, and for his Twitter presence in general. This is nothing new, as the billionaire (in his time on the platform) has inspired both reverence and revulsion. Some argued that his comments showed ignorance of the real situation in Ukraine and represented an attempt to cash in on the ongoing war.

Musk’s Twitter profile and personal fame is the most visible marketing tool of his companies Tesla and SpaceX, as documented in articles from around the business press. Some have attributed the relative success of his companies and personal brand to his canny use of the platform to generate publicity.


On a similar note, some took the chance to criticize Musk’s fans for their comments and their support of the billionaire, which is another common trend whenever his tweets go viral.


Several of Musk’s other Monday tweets also raised eyebrows around the web after he posted the recently trending I Support The Current Thing meme format.


This latest series of Elon Musk tweets also comes amid rumors of a split with his partner Grimes, who is now reportedly dating well-known whistleblower Chelsea Manning. As always, Musk's real state of mind remains a mystery, but that has never stopped the internet from speculating.



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