Programming for long hours under deadlines with an entire company’s future sometimes hanging on every line of code leads to the kind of stress that can only be relieved by beating the stuffing out of someone else.
The Gentlemen’s Fight Club meets in an undisclosed garage, and by appearing on-camera for CBS 5 in San Francisco violates the first and second rules of Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club. No matter, though. For this group of software developers, many of whom are practicing martial artists, rules and body parts were made to be broken.
Software engineers gather at the garage and engage in a number of one-minute fights with each other, while using plastic training knives, shinai, cookie sheets, and Hello Kitty toilet seats. As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up; watch the video.
The combatants wear masks, gloves, and protective cups. A series of makeshift walls forms the ring, and the floor is unpadded solid concrete. Anyone who has ever been in a fight knows that most of them end up on the ground, and the battles in The Gentlemen’s Fight Club are no exception. Quite a few of the fighters end up scraped, bloodied, and beat up.
All in good fun. But the potential for injury does exist. An orthopedic surgeon interviewed by CBS 5 called the likelihood of catastrophic injury “inevitable” while viewing the tape, due to the minimal protection and the concrete floor of the garage.
Kids, don’t try this at home.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
