All news

Musk-Zuckerberg showdown in Roman Colosseum a no-go — spokesmann

Sources in the Italian Ministry of Culture also denied any contact with the interested parties

ROME, June 30. /TASS/. There can be no fight between US billionaires Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg in the Roman Colosseum, a spokesman for the ancient monument and museum told TASS on Friday.

Earlier, Zuckerberg accepted Musk’s challenge for a fight. The TMZ web portal said, citing sources, that the Italian Ministry of Culture allegedly offered the Colosseum arena for the brawl.

"This is impossible because the Colosseum hosts high cultural level events and solely for the purpose of raising funds for charitable purposes," the spokesman said.

Sources in the Italian Ministry of Culture also denied any contact with the interested parties. "The news report is absolutely groundless, although such attention from the mass media only shows the popularity of Italian cultural heritage," the ministry commented. Any request to hold an event in the Colosseum is carefully evaluated from the standpoint of meeting all standards to preserve the monument, it stressed.

In line with the provocative tone of the entire story, sources in the Ministry of Culture suggested that the Americans engage in a war of words instead, a poetry contest in Latin, and noted that they would have to pay a lot to rent such space. All of the proceeds would go to charity, for example, to recovery efforts related to the large-scale flood in the Emilia-Romagna region in North Italy.