Hong Kong's Hedge Fund Fight Nite

I am standing in shorts and an oversized tank top beneath a marquee wedged between the harbour front and Hong Kong's great skyscrapers while on the other side of the curtain sit 700 guests eager to watch me get punched in the face.

While I nervously wait for the speakers to blast "Pump Pump" by Snoop Doggy Dogg - my chosen cue to enter the boxing ring - my cornerman rubs my shoulders while interviews of me and my opponent play on jumbo screens to the black-tie crowd. Bikini models circle the ring hoisting wine ads urging the audience to "Drink like a Champion". Just before Snoop starts, the announcer blunders my name and proclaims: "From the blue corner, fighting for the Financial Times, Patrick 'I ain't pretty' McGeeeeee!"

This is the set-up for Hedge Fund Fight Nite, an annual event now in its eighth year. After five months of almost daily training, 14 men and two women - all overeducated "white-collar" types (and one journalist) - are climbing into a boxing ring with the sole intent of demolishing their opponent within three two-minute rounds. We wear headgear and 16oz gloves to prevent serious injury, but I've already witnessed one competitor get knocked down by a single, concussion-inducing blow; another came out with a black eye. Everyone entering the ring knows they will win; only half do. And there are no second chances; the event is for first-timers only.

Just five months ago I started training with a group of 70. The coaches at JAB, a mixed martial arts studio in Hong Kong, whittled us down to 16 by reality show-style elimination, throwing out candidates on the basis of stamina, co-ordination or effort.

Harry "Man of" Steel, 30, associate director at HSBC Private Bank, had just returned from the alcohol-infused Glastonbury music festival in the UK when he arrived for the first training session. "It was a shock to the system," he says.

As the training progressed, more fighters would translate their anxiety into extra sessions. "Training for something, a fight, is great motivation," says Steel. "It's like, if I don't do this, I'll get my ass handed to me."

At the office, bruised faces often require delicate explanation so clients are not taken aback by the new hobby. "I deal with the wealth of lawyers and bankers - that's my demographic," says Will "Knuckle Sandwich" Kruis, from St James's Place Wealth Management. "Some thought I was nuts. There was a sense of, 'Oh, you're a different person outside the office.' You know - wealth manager by day, boxer by night."

The first white-collar fights took place at Gleason's Gym in Brooklyn, New York, the oldest active boxing gym in the US. The 15,000 square-foot facility is best known for the pros who have sparred there: 134 world champions, including Cassius Clay just before he took the world title from Sonny Liston and changed his name to Muhammad Ali.

In the late 1980s, just as books such as The Bonfire of the Vanities and Liar's Poker were excoriating Wall Street culture for its excesses, droves of businessmen, lawyers and doctors started showing up to learn the "sweet science". Bruce Silverglade, who has owned the gym since 1983, sensed an opportunity. "I wanted them to have something to do so they wouldn't leave," he says. "You know, Gleason's is a world-famous gym, but in reality I'm just a small businessman."

Boxing in the US was, and is, regulated by the government at every level. "If you and your sister want to settle a dispute with gloves on, you need permission," Silverglade says. The regulators did not have a framework for less-than-amateurs to duke it out. Silverglade fought to amend the law, lost and contemplated giving up. Instead, in 1991, he started bootleg shows.

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Three decades ago Gleason's was "99.9 per cent professional fighters", Silverglade says. Now about 70 per cent are business people - and about a third of them are women. In 2000, white-collar boxing expanded abroad when Silverglade took a crew of Wall Street fighters to London, pitting them against City brokers in a contest dubbed "Capital Punishment".

The illicit shows got too big. In 2006, New York State banned white-collar boxing and it took regulators five years to develop a proper framework. The shows nonetheless flourished abroad as event managers established regular training programmes culminating in major fundraisers. They are now in every leading financial centre: Tokyo, Shanghai and Singapore all have big events and many are glitzy affairs. The Boodles Boxing Ball, a charity event held in London by the luxury jeweller, has a history going back to 2002 and has hosted Prince William and Kate Middleton. Twice.

<>In Hong Kong, when event organiser Rob Derry founded Hedge Fund Fight Nite in 2007, he hoped it might last five years before the novelty wore off. Instead, it has become bigger each year - and the last four have featured a women's bout. Derry says Hong Kong is an ideal city for the programme because the expatriate population is transient, hardworking and looking for a thrill. "If you are prepared - and I'm really not - to do that training while doing your day job, sacrificing the awesome nightlife on offer in Hong Kong, there has to be something different in your DNA," he says.

The latest Hedge Fund Fight Nite raised just under HK$900,000 ($116,000) for two charities - Operation Breakthrough, a Hong Kong-based organisation that tries to reform teenagers on the wrong side of the law, and the Chinese arm of Operation Smile, which provides free surgeries to repair children's facial deformities - it is poetic justice, perhaps, that a sport known for wrecking faces also raises money to fix them.

I signed up for the event because my girlfriend, Eleni, had won the women's match the year before and remembers it as one of the best nights of her life. That alone could have inspired me to sign up, but that she could beat me up was just as much reason.

I quickly learned the strange satisfaction of landing a fist on someone's face. In the video blaring on the jumbo screens, I describe a sparring memory when I deliver an uppercut that sent spit from my partner flying past his shoulder. One friend was concerned that I sounded like a sociopath, positively loving the memory of hurting someone. But it is not my opponent's pain that pleases - it is the hours of hard work paying off in the most visceral way.

As the referee checks my gloves and my friends clamour for the best vantage point, I am feeling confident against Xiaozhou "Big Bang" Wang, a financial crime compliance manager at HSBC. Luck gave me longer reach - a crucial advantage.

I am in the best shape of my life, so it is surprising just how fatigued I am soon after the punches start flying. It's difficult to convey just how exhausting this is. The best way it's been described to me is: "Imagine the most intense cardio you've done, be it sprinting, never-ending press-ups, whatever. Now, add someone punching you in the face."

When ESPN, the television network, commissioned experts to rank 60 sports by difficulty, boxing came top; fishing was last. Boxing scored highest for durability - "the ability to withstand physical punishment over a long period of time" - and among eight categories it received more accolade for endurance, power and nerve - "the ability to overcome fear".

It was nerve that meant most to me. I knew I would enjoy the fitness and challenge of pugilism, but I surprised everyone, including myself, with the aggression that came out in sparring. Training at Rooney's Gym in London, I pummelled a taller opponent into a corner until a coach pulled me aside to say: "Hey, you're not trying to start a war here." It needed to be said, but whenever I tell the story I burst out laughing. Me?

As I stand centre ring, focused, the noise from the crowd is drowned out. I hear my coach's voice - "Go for the body!" - but little else. A long minute later, five months of anxiety and pressure dissipate. I am elated, arm raised in victory. The noise washes over me. But I am also disappointed it is over.

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