A closer look
Southwest Airlines co-founder Herb Kelleher literally settled a trademark dispute over an advertising slogan in 1992 by challenging the CEO of a rival aviation company to a highly publicized arm wrestling match. Instead of wasting millions of dollars on corporate lawyers billing five hundred bucks an hour the two executives rented out a wrestling ring in Dallas and duked it out in front of cheering employees. Kelleher ended up losing the match but the sheer publicity generated by the stunt was so overwhelmingly positive that the winner let Southwest keep using the slogan anyway. This is the exact kind of unhinged masculine bravado that modern late-stage capitalism is desperately missing today. If tech billionaires actually followed through on their cage matches they might finally achieve this level of vintage transport executive energy
