The Lords Of The Ring

In the boxing ring, five seconds can be an eternity, as Alex "the Slugger" Wade learned when Vince "Dynamite" Dickson landed a punch square in his face at the beginning of the second round. Blood trickled from Wade's mouth, and he swayed from side to side. The crowd of 800 at London's York Hall — the spiritual home of British boxing — held its breath.

But Wade returned with a flurry of punches, and finished with his pride intact. Despite his tough-guy nickname, Wade, a 37-year-old father of two, is not a professional boxer — he's a lawyer and writer. "I cannot overemphasize how terrifying the whole thing was," says Wade. "But it's an adrenaline boost you don't get every day."

In the past three years, some 1,200 lawyers, bankers, judges and other suits — mostly thirty- and fortysomething men — have joined London's The Real Fight Club, a for-profit company founded in 2001 by events promoter Alan Lacey. The white-collar amateurs squeeze in two to four 90-minute training sessions a week — plus cross-training on alternate days — with the ultimate goal of getting into the ring to beat the hell out of each other in front of crowds. The attraction? Says Lacey, "Death or glory. Boxing is a chance to make their schoolboy fantasies come true."

Now the club is set to expand to Germany, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Lacey has had the most requests from Germans (and the German media), though he's not sure why. "Maybe they like seeing other people get hit," he says with a shrug. The Real Fight Club has a rival in Australia — the for-profit Australian Academy of Boxing already offers white-collar boxing training and competitions.

Death or glory. Boxing is a chance to make their schoolboy fantasies come true. — ALAN LACEY, founder of The Real Fight Club

The sport is also starting in Singapore, where the U2 Can gym — a converted chicken shed — recently bought a boxing ring and has begun to offer serious training. Among the instructors: an ex-head boxing coach for the Singapore Army.

The Real Fight Club in London is beginning to attract women. "I get a real buzz out of making my films, but that's a slow burn," says Ann Parisio, a documentary filmmaker who boxed in the first women's fight in London in June. "Boxing is so physical; so immediate. It's such a rush."

It's also slightly watered down: the three rounds of a Real Fight Club fight are two minutes apiece instead of three, and the gloves are 16 ounces instead of 8, which blunts the punches. There are paramedics and an ambulance waiting, and bouts are stopped if there is too much blood. "The bottom line is that all of these guys have to go back to the office the next day," Lacey says. There's been one knockout — a lawyer named Paul "Mad Manx" Beckett — in 280 rounds. Few egos are badly bruised, though, because no winners are named. "It's intense enough without that," says Paul Damonte, 39, a money broker.