David Yaffe-Bellany, The Tech Guys Are Fighting. Literally. NYTimes, May 11, 2025.
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, Mr. Batey wore a black sweatshirt emblazoned with the logos of more than a dozen crypto companies, with names like LunarCrush and bitSmiley. He had arrived in town with some expensive footwear — a pair of Off-White Air Jordans, the type of sneaker, he said, that people usually don’t take out of the box.
Mr. Batey, however, was at the conference not to network with fellow crypto enthusiasts but to fight one of them — live on YouTube. At the hotel, a short drive from the conference convention center, he was preparing for his official weigh-in, the final step before a fight the next evening in an arena packed with crypto colleagues. Under the watchful eye of a representative from the Colorado Combative Sports Commission, Mr. Batey, 40, stripped down to his boxers, which were adorned with a cartoon Santa Claus riding a golf cart.
He weighed in at just under 195 pounds, on target for the fight. The bare-chested venture capitalist raised his biceps and flexed for the cameras.
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 Mr. 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 Mr. Zuckerberg, dressed in gym shorts and an American flag T-shirt, grappling his opponent to the ground.
Good lord! And these are the dudes leading the AI revolution!
So we have a lot of this and that about techbros working their fight club vibe, all centered on a fight between Batey and Chauncey St. John, a crypto guy from upstate New York. The fight itself:
What followed more closely resembled a schoolyard scrap than a professional martial-arts bout. The choreographed moves that Mr. Batey had rehearsed were nowhere to be seen. Over and over, he threw punches and missed, lunging forward and then lurching back. Mr. St. John swung his arms wildly, whirling in a circle, like a helicopter. Next to the pit, a panel of announcers offered live analysis for the YouTube audience.
“What they lack in technical, they make up for in the heart,” one commentator said. His partner offered a blunter assessment: “It’s hilarious.”
By the end of the first round, Mr. Batey’s nose was bleeding heavily. But soon he forced Mr. St. John to the ground and straddled him, raining punches down onto his head. Within 10 seconds, the referee intervened: Mr. St. John couldn’t continue. It was over.
At the after-party:
That night, Mr. Batey went out to celebrate. He had showered, changed and cleaned up his face, except for a single streak of dried blood that was intact on the bridge of his nose. At the entrance to a party near Civic Center Park, Mr. Batey informed the bouncer that he had featured in “a pro fight tonight, a fight on TV.”
The bouncer didn’t seem impressed. But Mr. Batey found a more appreciative audience on the dance floor, where his friends swarmed him, offering hugs and fist bumps. Soon a chant went up: “Batey, Batey, Batey, Batey.”
Away from the group, Mr. Batey confided that at the arena, not long after the fight, he had approached Mr. St. John to express his respect and gratitude — and to make clear that he was “proud of him, as a human.”
Mr. St. John had fought hard, Mr. Batey said. Maybe someday they would be friends.
“He’s a good guy,” Mr. Batey said. “We’re both just good dudes.”
Come to think of it, that's not so foreign to me. To be sure, I'm not getting in the ring anytime soon. I'm an old man and overweight. But at a jam session, depending on the vibe, I might take heads. I've done it in the past, the distant past to be sure, but I've done it.
So I'm thinking. A jam session is about making music, pleasing an audience, or at any rate, yourself, with your artistic prowess. No one is going to end up bleeding on the floor. But there is one's rep at state, if only for the evening. The combat is real. But it is also artistic. Victory is written in written in grace, elegance, and wit, but – yes! – also virtuosity (sheer technical prowess), and even ferocity.
I wonder how it is with real fighters, professionals. As fighters these techbros are amateurs. "Schoolyard scrap" is what Yaffe-Bellany called. They're not good enough to display artistry. But the professionals, what's the balance between artistry and ferocity? It's one thing to whip your opponent, it's another thing to put on a good show. In pro wrestling it's all about the show. Victory and loss are scripted. Some time they're scripted in professional boxing. But that's illegal and is done behind the scenes. It's cheating.
What's real? That's a real question, and an interesting one at that. How does this dynamic play between nations?
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