Leon D. Black, the billionaire financier, watched silently as his son administered a flurry of punches.
Jab-jab-jab: Ben Black, 30, at 188 pounds, had Eric Vreeland in a corner of the boxing ring and was attacking at close range. At the Blacks’ table by the stage, Debra Black, Ben’s mother, cheered. Ben had dedicated this fight to her.
These scrappy contenders entered the ring on Thursday night as part of an amateur boxing event organized by Haymakers for Hope, a foundation that raises money for cancer research. Now in its third year in New York, the event tends to inspire bankers, traders, entrepreneurs and lawyers to put on gloves — fighters more familiar with a profit-and-loss statement than a bob-and-weave.
The white-collar warriors — including Ben Black, an associate at the private equity firm his father runs, Apollo Global Management; and Mr. Vreeland, 27, an analyst at the venture capital firm Bowery Capital — had spent the last several months in intense training. The 30 fighters performed before a sold-out crowd of 1,200 of their friends, family members and colleagues, who whooped and chanted in the thundering auditorium of the Best Buy Theater in Midtown Manhattan. Tables ranged from $5,000 to $15,000, helping the event raise more than $600,000 to “knock out cancer.”
For a certain type of hard-charging professional, boxing became a natural complement to a grueling work schedule. Not that balancing the two was easy: The fighters hit the gym five or six days a week, shedding pounds and building muscle. They occasionally showed up for work with scrapes. But many discovered an affinity for the sport. And their colleagues, in addition to contributing to their fund-raising campaigns, appeared delighted to see them in the ring.
“I figured people on a trading floor would be excited about this kind of thing. But I didn’t realize how excited they would be,” Nora Ali, 25, a fighter who works in equity sales at Goldman Sachs, said in a recent interview. “It’s like the main topic of conversation I have with people. Like ‘How’s your training? Have you sparred with your opponent? Have you punched anyone?’”
Ms. Ali’s supporters turned up en masse on Thursday night — chanting, seemingly without irony, “Ali! Ali! Ali!” — as did numerous bankers and lawyers rooting for their own champions. One fight pitted two Citigroup employees against each other in a matchup that mirrored an age-old tension between Wall Street’s two business lines: Chris Owens, a trader, fought Ignacio Martin, an analyst in the firm’s investment bank.
Mr. Martin, 23, was the jumpier of the two, throwing more punches, while Mr. Owens, 34, waited in a defensive stance. The trader opened up in the second round, landing a few blows, while his fans informed him that his opponent was getting tired. The banker held his own, attacking the trader’s torso. In the end, the judges gave the fight to Mr. Owens in a unanimous decision.
“We were both not very pleased that it was Citi versus Citi,” Mr. Martin said in a phone interview before the fight, as a spokesman for the bank listened in on the line. But he said the fight had not divided the office. (“We all work together across the organization to serve our clients,” the spokesman, Robert Julavits, added.)
Many of the fighters had never boxed before training for the Haymakers event, while others had some previous experience. Nick Lagemann, 42, a partner at the law firm Sidley Austin, who played football in college, took up boxing as a way to stay in shape. But Haymakers pushed his workouts to a higher level. “I don’t know if this falls into the category of a midlife crisis or something like that,” he said.
A litigator in bankruptcy cases and other corporate disputes, Mr. Lagemann said boxing wasn’t so different from his line of work.
“It’s, for lack of a better term, ‘put up or shut up’ time,” he said.
Haymakers was started in 2009 by two friends, Andrew Myerson and Julie Anne Kelly, who met at a boxing gym in New York. Training for the New York Golden Gloves tournament, the two decided to try to raise money for a cause. Ms. Kelly had survived Hodgkins lymphoma, and a friend of Mr. Myerson’s had died of cancer. After raising money on their own for cancer research, they staged their first boxing event in Boston in 2011. The foundation has now raised more than $3 million.
This year’s fighters allowed themselves to be consumed by the project. They lifted weights, polished their technique and, on one occasion, sparred with their opponents. Chris Lewarne, 29, an associate at the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges, said he consulted his trainer about daily decisions, including what cereal to buy.
“I worked in construction before law,” Mr. Lewarne said. “I haven’t done anything as grueling as this, besides studying for the New York bar and being a first-year associate in New York.”
Mr. Martin, the Citigroup analyst, benefited from a new policy of having junior bankers take Saturdays off. (This policy and similar ones were a change on Wall Street, where junior bankers regularly work through the weekends.) But he didn’t spend that extra time loafing. Instead, he said, he had a “no fun Friday” policy before starting early on Saturday at the gym.
But for all their preparation, no fighter had ever experienced a night quite like Thursday, with colored lights and pulsating bass making the auditorium resemble a nightclub. A series of screens displayed slick videos of the boxers during training, jabbing at the camera and often dedicating their fight to a person who had fought cancer. “This is their first time ever stepping into the boxing ring,” the announcer declared.
Ben Black, the Apollo associate, said he was fighting for his mother, who has spoken publicly in the past about her successful battle with melanoma.
A couple of inches shorter and a touch lighter than his opponent, Mr. Black came in fast and low. He landed more blows than Mr. Vreeland in the beginning, but he perturbed the referee by sometimes latching on to Mr. Vreeland with one glove while pounding him with the other. The second round seemed to tip in Mr. Vreeland’s favor, with the venture capitalist landing several punches. Still, Mr. Black gave his fans at Table 1 plenty of opportunities to cheer.
At the end, the referee took both fighters by the hand. There was a pause as the judges considered. Leon Black, sitting by his wife, only smiled.
Then, by a split decision, the judges called the bout for Mr. Vreeland, whose face lit up. Some at the Blacks’ table looked surprised, though they appeared gracious in defeat.
“I’ll definitely be reaching out and seeing if we can get to know each other a little bit better,” Mr. Vreeland said afterward, “besides just hitting each other in the face.”
