Not content with boardroom battles, tech guys are fighting literally

Despite unfathomable wealth and rising political influence in Washington, tech elites have developed a new obsession

By David Yaffe-Bellany  Walking into the crowded hotel conference room, Andrew Batey looked like any other tech guy attending ETHDenver, an annual cryptocurrency conference. A venture capital investor based in Florida, Batey wore a black sweatshirt emblazoned with the logos of more than a dozen crypto companies, with names like LunarCrush and bitSmiley. Batey, however, was at the conference not to network with fellow crypto enthusiasts but to fight one of them — live on YouTube.

 

The nation’s tech elite, not content with unfathomable wealth and rising political influence in Washington, have recently developed a new obsession — fighting. Across the United States, men like Batey are learning to punch, kick, knee, elbow and, in some cases, hammer an opponent over the head with their fists. The figurehead of the movement is Mark Zuckerberg, the billionaire chief executive of Meta, who has charted his impressive physical transformation from skinny computer nerd to martial arts fighter on Instagram, one of the apps he owns. A recent post showed Zuckerberg, dressed in gym shorts and an American flag T-shirt, grappling his opponent to the ground.

 

The tech industry’s newfound devotion to martial arts is one facet of a broader cultural shift that has upended US politics. Many of these tech founders turned fighters are chasing a testosterone-heavy ideal of masculinity that is ascendant on social media and embraced by President Trump. An enthusiastic practitioner of Brazilian jujitsu, Zuckerberg, 40, lamented this year that corporate culture was getting “neutered” and was devoid of “masculine energy.” In 2023,  Zuckerberg’s fellow billionaire Elon Musk, a longtime corporate rival, challenged him to a televised cage match. The fight never took place, though Musk suggested at one point that he was willing to do battle in the Roman Colosseum.

 

Ancient Rome is, in some ways, a useful reference point for this era of ultrarich braggadocio. The wealthiest Romans were fascinated with violent combat. The emperor Commodus even joined in the gladiatorial contests, claiming he had fought as many as 1,000 times.

 

These days, the rise of mixed martial arts is part of a cultural revanchism that has thrived in the so-called manosphere, where hypermasculine online commentators complain that women have become too powerful in the workplace. In this corner of the internet, men are seeking to reclaim a kind of aggressive masculinity that came under scrutiny during the #MeToo era.

 

It’s the latest iteration of a phenomenon that the feminist writer Susan Faludi described in her 1991 book, “Backlash,” about how men have historically reacted to advances in women’s rights. In an interview last month, Faludi said the growing male obsession with fighting amounted to “a boy’s idea of what it means to be a man.”

 

The urge to fight has recently spilled over from the tech billionaire class to the industry’s trenches, where mere decamillionaires and millionaires now practice martial arts in increasing numbers. Until lately, though, a run-of-the-mill tech founder hoping to flex his muscles on TV would have had limited options. Then a company called Karate Combat glimpsed a market opportunity. Batey runs a venture capital firm, Side Door Ventures, that invests in crypto start-ups. Two years ago, his venture fund invested $500,000 in Karate Combat, a would-be competitor to the Ultimate Fighting Championship. The league operates as a hybrid between an athletic competition and a tech start-up. Rather than offering traditional shares, Karate Combat gave Batey’s firm Karate tokens — a cryptocurrency that fans can wager on Karate Combat fights, which stream on YouTube as well as TV channels like ESPN Deportes. Karate Combat’s primary business is professional fighting — mixed martial arts contests featuring seasoned athletes, some of whom also fight in UFC Last year, the company created a new competition for amateurs and started offering it as the undercard at pro events, which are sometimes held at crypto conferences. The competition was called Influencer Fight Club, and its premise was simple: Put a couple of tech guys in the ring and see what happens.

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