Strolling into the crowded resort convention room, Andrew Batey regarded like every other tech man attending ETHDenver, an annual cryptocurrency convention. A enterprise capital investor primarily based in Florida, Mr. Batey wore a black sweatshirt emblazoned with the logos of greater than a dozen crypto firms, with names like LunarCrush and bitSmiley. He had arrived on the town with some costly footwear — a pair of Off-White Air Jordans, the kind of sneaker, he stated, that individuals normally don’t take out of the field.
Mr. Batey, nonetheless, was on the convention to not community with fellow crypto fanatics however to battle one in all them — dwell on YouTube. On the resort, a brief drive from the convention conference middle, he was making ready for his official weigh-in, the ultimate step earlier than a battle the subsequent night in an area full of crypto colleagues. Underneath the watchful eye of a consultant from the Colorado Combative Sports activities Fee, Mr. Batey, 40, stripped right down to his boxers, which had been adorned with a cartoon Santa Claus using a golf cart.
He weighed in at just below 195 kilos, heading in the right direction for the battle. The bare-chested enterprise capitalist raised his biceps and flexed for the cameras.
The nation’s tech elite, not content material with unfathomable wealth and rising political affect in Washington, have not too long ago developed a brand new obsession — combating. Throughout the USA, males like Mr. Batey are studying to punch, kick, knee, elbow and, in some instances, hammer an opponent over the top with their fists. The figurehead of the motion is Mark Zuckerberg, the billionaire chief government of Meta, who has charted his spectacular bodily transformation from skinny laptop nerd to martial arts fighter on Instagram, one of many apps he owns. A recent post confirmed Mr. Zuckerberg, wearing fitness center shorts and an American flag T-shirt, grappling his opponent to the bottom.
The tech trade’s newfound devotion to martial arts is one aspect of a broader cultural shift that has upended U.S. politics. Many of those tech founders turned fighters are chasing a testosterone-heavy ultimate of masculinity that’s ascendant on social media and embraced by President Trump. An enthusiastic practitioner of Brazilian jujitsu, Mr. Zuckerberg, 40, lamented this yr that company tradition was getting “neutered” and was devoid of “masculine power.” In 2023, Mr. Zuckerberg’s fellow billionaire Elon Musk, a longtime corporate rival, challenged him to a televised cage match. The battle by no means passed off, although Mr. Musk urged at one level that he was willing to do battle within the Roman Colosseum.
Historical Rome is, in some methods, a helpful reference level for this period of ultrarich braggadocio. The wealthiest Romans had been fascinated with violent fight. The emperor Commodus even joined within the gladiatorial contests, claiming he had fought as many as 1,000 occasions. By the early twentieth century, combating was nonetheless a well-liked pastime for the elites: An avid boxer in his Harvard years, Teddy Roosevelt regularly sparred on the White Home.
Nowadays, the rise of blended martial arts is a part of a cultural revanchism that has thrived within the so-called manosphere, the place hypermasculine on-line commentators complain that ladies have grow to be too highly effective within the office. On this nook of the web, males are searching for to reclaim a type of aggressive masculinity that got here below scrutiny in the course of the #MeToo period.
It’s the most recent iteration of a phenomenon that the feminist author Susan Faludi described in her 1991 ebook, “Backlash,” about how males have traditionally reacted to advances in girls’s rights. In an interview final month, Ms. Faludi stated the rising male obsession with combating amounted to “a boy’s concept of what it means to be a person.”
“Dwelling out this childhood fantasy of being professional athletes, that’s simply puerile,” she stated. “These guys want to find yoga.”
The urge to battle has not too long ago spilled over from the tech billionaire class to the trade’s trenches, the place mere decamillionaires and millionaires now observe martial arts in growing numbers. Mr. Zuckerberg’s transformation supplied a “beacon of hope” for different executives, Mr. Batey stated. “Dreamers can latch on to one thing like this and say, ‘Perhaps it’s doable.’”
Till recently, although, a run-of-the-mill tech founder hoping to flex his muscle tissue on TV would have had restricted choices. Then an organization referred to as Karate Fight glimpsed a market alternative.
A ‘Clout-Forming Train’
Many of the tech world’s aspiring fighters have a vital factor in widespread: Earlier than they began pursuing their extravagant new pastime, they made some huge cash.
In 2018, Mr. Batey based Beatdapp, an organization that develops software program to remove fraud in music streaming. He additionally runs a enterprise capital agency, Aspect Door Ventures, that invests in crypto start-ups. Like a lot of his colleagues, Mr. Batey is the consummate pitchman. Even the miracle of life is a chance for crypto evangelism. When mates expect a child, Mr. Batey stated, he offers them Bitcoin (price greater than $100,000 at right now’s costs) and asks them to not promote till their baby turns 18.
“I at all times hated giving individuals like a onesie,” he stated. “I hate the idea of giving someone one thing that they might simply afford.”
Two years in the past, Mr. Batey’s enterprise fund invested $500,000 in Karate Fight, a would-be competitor to the Final Preventing Championship. The league operates as a hybrid between an athletic competitors and a tech start-up. Moderately than providing conventional shares, Karate Fight gave Mr. Batey’s agency Karate tokens — a cryptocurrency that followers can wager on Karate Fight fights, which stream on YouTube in addition to TV channels like ESPN Deportes.
Karate Fight’s main enterprise is skilled combating — blended martial arts contests that includes seasoned athletes, a few of whom additionally battle in U.F.C. (A consultant for Karate Fight declined to disclose how a lot cash the league generates.) Final yr, the corporate created a brand new competitors for amateurs and began providing it because the undercard at professional occasions, that are generally held at crypto conferences. The competitors was referred to as Influencer Struggle Membership, and its premise was easy: Put a few tech guys within the ring and see what occurs.
Karate Fight’s fights have an intensive following on Crypto Twitter, and Influencer Struggle Membership has helped entice extra of these super-online followers. Over the past 18 months, the competitors has featured some huge names within the crypto world, together with Nic Carter, a enterprise investor recognized for his combative posts on X, the place he has attacked authorities regulators and questioned the efficacy of Covid vaccines. At a crypto convention in Nashville final summer season, Mr. Carter, boasting a powerful physique, knocked out a tattooed crypto marketer in a single spherical. On social media, he was hailed as “kingly” and adopted the nickname “Tungsten Daddy.”
“That is a tremendous clout-forming train,” Mr. Carter stated in a latest interview. “To not be cynical about it.”
Mr. Batey attended an Influencer Struggle Membership occasion in Austin, Texas, final yr and determined he wished to battle, too. As soon as an beginner athlete who dabbled in boxing, he had gained loads of weight as his profession took off, finally carrying 283 kilos on his 5-foot, 10-inch body. He was about to show 40 and wanted to get into form for well being causes. However he additionally wished to have the form of athletic expertise normally reserved for severe fighters, who generally practice their complete lives for the prospect to compete on TV.
“That is my fortieth birthday celebration — me combating,” Mr. Batey defined. “Perhaps it’s a midlife disaster.”
For 4 months, Mr. Batey put his profession on maintain and spent $75,000 on a coach, a nutritionist and a rotating forged {of professional} sparring companions. After the battle was scheduled for ETHDenver, a convention dedicated to the cryptocurrency Ethereum, he booked a block of almost 30 resort rooms to accommodate his mates and supporters.
The coaching was transformative, Mr. Batey stated. He developed muscle tissue he hadn’t seen in 20 years. Masculinity “doesn’t issue into how I give it some thought,” he stated. “However I positively really feel extra masculine.”
At first Mr. Batey had bother discovering an appropriate opponent. Final yr, he went to New York to spar with Billy McFarland, the creator of Fyre Competition, the fraudulent music occasion that impressed a Netflix documentary. However Mr. McFarland backed out after Karate Fight refused to ensure him a $100,000 look charge, Mr. Batey stated. Mr. McFarland declined to remark. (Payouts range throughout Karate Fight’s influencer fights. One contract reviewed by The New York Occasions supplied a $2,000 participation charge and a bonus of $10,000 in Karate tokens if the fighter landed a knockout punch.) A second doable opponent declined to battle Mr. Batey over considerations in regards to the venue: He couldn’t seem at an Ethereum convention as a result of he was loyal to Solana, a rival cryptocurrency.
By January, Mr. Batey was nervous the battle wouldn’t come collectively in time. Then an answer emerged: Chauncey St. John, a crypto entrepreneur primarily based in upstate New York.
Mr. St. John doesn’t appear very like a fighter. “I’ve bought this Mr. Rogers vibe to me,” he stated not too long ago. However he had endured his share of hardship within the crypto world. In 2021, he based Angel Protocol, a start-up that aimed to assist charities elevate cash utilizing crypto. Sadly, he steered his shoppers towards an funding platform tied to Luna, a digital forex whose value crashed in a single day in 2022, setting off a meltdown within the crypto markets that erased a lot of what the charities had raised.
After the Luna crash, Mr. St. John, 38, retreated from public view. He reimbursed the charities with cash his agency had saved up and embraced Christianity, trying to find which means within the worst second of his profession. At some point in January, Mr. St. John was scrolling on his cellphone when he glanced at a gaggle chat that included different crypto fanatics. His eyes fell on a message from an trade colleague who goes by the nickname “The Degen Boii”: Karate Fight wanted a fighter for ETHDenver.
The invitation “felt like testimony from God,” Mr. St. John stated.
For a part of his life, he stated, he didn’t slot in with different males, and generally questioned if he was homosexual. (He’s now married to a girl.) Right here was an opportunity to re-enter the crypto trade, re-establish his public profile and lay declare to what he calls “divine masculinity.”
“We’re making an attempt to make it so equality means there’s no distinction between the genders,” Mr. St. John stated. “There’s a wholesome masculinity that’s been thrown out, child with the bathwater-style.”
He signed a contract and booked a flight to Denver.
Nerds Making an attempt ‘to Man Up’
A number of hours after the weigh-in, Mr. Batey drove to the Stockyards Occasion Heart, a sprawling venue on the outskirts of Denver the place Karate Fight had erected 4 units of stands, overlooking a pit lined with mats. An in depth entourage got here alongside: two trainers, a few fighters from Mr. Batey’s fitness center and a filmmaker taking pictures footage for a documentary about his transformation.
With 24 hours to go till the battle, it was time for the ceremonial face-off, a chance for ostentatious trash discuss. On the sting of the pit, the league’s president, Asim Zaidi, summoned the 2 crypto founders ahead.
Mr. Batey drew near Mr. St. John, virtually nostril to nostril. “Are you gonna kiss me?” Mr. St. John requested.
“We’ll discover out,” Mr. Batey replied.
When the theatrics concluded, Mr. St. John walked right down to the pit. In contrast to Mr. Batey, he had not had a lot time to organize; his entourage consisted of a single individual, a coach with no professional combating expertise, whom he had met a number of months earlier within the “Indigenous spirituality neighborhood,” he stated. Alone within the ring, Mr. St. John began to shadow field.
A number of toes away, Chiheb Soumer, a former skilled kick boxer, was watching him intently. A local of Hamburg, Germany, Mr. Soumer, 36, had as soon as labored as an in-house coach for Snap in Los Angeles, educating tech workers find out how to field. He traveled to Denver as Mr. Batey’s coach.
“I like to see these nerds unexpectedly attempt to man up,” he stated.
Even by martial-arts requirements, Mr. Soumer cuts an uncompromising determine, allotting blunt insults in a deep, accented voice, vaguely harking back to Arnold Schwarzenegger. He’s notably attuned to any signal that somebody is “comfortable” — an unforgivable frailty that, in his view, explains all method of embarrassing conduct.
“That’s a really comfortable assertion,” Mr. Soumer had noticed just some hours earlier than the face-off, when Mr. Batey lamented that he’d had to surrender lattes to shed pounds for the battle.
Mr. Soumer was unimpressed with Mr. Batey’s opponent — or “this child Chauncey,” as he referred to as him. “No arms, no shoulder,” he stated, with the medical air of a horse breeder providing his verdict on a wobbly foal. Exterior the Stockyards, Mr. Soumer mimed a sequence of stuttering lunges, whereas the remainder of Mr. Batey’s entourage roared with laughter.
“Bro, comfortable,” Mr. Soumer stated. “Smooth like butter, bro.”
Mr. Batey grinned. “I’ve by no means had extra confidence for something in my life,” he stated.
He turned to Mr. Soumer. “After I knock him out, ought to I donate my winnings to his charity?”
“No,” Mr. Soumer replied. “Preserve it for your self.”
Within the Ring on Struggle Evening
On battle night time on the Stockyards, the enemy combatants warmed up a number of toes from one another as the world slowly full of spectators — males in crypto T-shirts and backward baseball caps, swigging beer and taking images. At 6 p.m., a roar unfold by the constructing, as Mr. St. John and Mr. Batey slid into the pit.
What adopted extra intently resembled a schoolyard scrap than knowledgeable martial-arts bout. The choreographed strikes that Mr. Batey had rehearsed had been nowhere to be seen. Again and again, he threw punches and missed, lunging ahead after which lurching again. Mr. St. John swung his arms wildly, whirling in a circle, like a helicopter. Subsequent to the pit, a panel of announcers supplied dwell evaluation for the YouTube viewers.
“What they lack in technical, they make up for within the coronary heart,” one commentator stated. His companion supplied a blunter evaluation: “It’s hilarious.”
By the top of the primary spherical, Mr. Batey’s nostril was bleeding closely. However quickly he compelled Mr. St. John to the bottom and straddled him, raining punches down onto his head. Inside 10 seconds, the referee intervened: Mr. St. John couldn’t proceed. It was over.
Mr. Batey held his arms aloft and began to bop, thrusting his pelvis towards the group. “I simply need to thank my spouse,” he informed the cheering crowd. “Thanks for supporting me, making my meals, placing the children to mattress.”
Backstage, Mr. St. John was smiling. “I didn’t embarrass myself,” he stated. All the trouble had been price it. He would fortunately do it over once more
That night time, Mr. Batey went out to rejoice. He had showered, modified and cleaned up his face, apart from a single streak of dried blood that was intact on the bridge of his nostril. On the entrance to a celebration close to Civic Heart Park, Mr. Batey knowledgeable the bouncer that he had featured in “a professional battle tonight, a battle on TV.”
The bouncer didn’t appear impressed. However Mr. Batey discovered a extra appreciative viewers on the dance flooring, the place his mates swarmed him, providing hugs and fist bumps. Quickly a chant went up: “Batey, Batey, Batey, Batey.”
Away from the group, Mr. Batey confided that on the area, not lengthy after the battle, he had approached Mr. St. John to precise his respect and gratitude — and to clarify that he was “pleased with him, as a human.”
Mr. St. John had fought onerous, Mr. Batey stated. Perhaps sometime they might be mates.
“He’s man,” Mr. Batey stated. “We’re each simply good dudes.”
Kitty Bennett contributed analysis.
