Elon Musk appeared to have finally followed up on the proposed cage match between him and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg by announcing that the fight will take place in an "epic" venue in Rome, Italy. But Italy's Minister of Culture denies agreeing to Rome as a venue, and Zuckerberg doesn't seem convinced about Musk's conviction to fight.

The news comes after Musk took to his X profile to make a post confirming some details of the fight, claiming that it would be arranged by his and Zuckerberg's foundations and that the venue is set to be in Rome, with Musk claiming to have spoken to the Italian PM to confirm the location.

But this all appears to be news to Mark Zuckerberg, who claims that Musk has not responded to the request to set a definite date for the cage fight to take place, adding that Musk requested to grapple in Zuckerberg's backyard in a "practice" bout instead.

Musk's request to engage in such a practice match appears to be confirmed by a text interaction shared by veteran journalist Water Isaacson.

Zuckerberg had dismissed the grand promises of a Roman stage earlier this week as well, saying that no clear date had been set for the fight. In response to this, Musk made the bizarre decision to refer to Zuckerberg as "Zuck my 👅," befuddling X users.

At this point, the question of whether the fight will take place in the coming months appears to be up in the air, with Zuckerberg seemingly withdrawing his belief that the fight will take place, in spite of his own enthusiasm.