Kevin Roose/The New York TimesRichard J. Byrne, chief executive of Deutsche Bank Securities, sparring with trainers at Mushin Mixed Martial Arts.
At first glance, Richard J. Byrne, the chief executive of Deutsche Bank Securities, doesn’t look much like a warrior.
“He isn’t the prototypical person you’d see and think, ‘This guy’s going to beat me up,’ ” said Erik Owings, a professional mixed martial arts fighter who has trained Mr. Byrne since 2008. But given the right circumstances, “if Bruce Lee rose from the dead, Rich could choke him out.”
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Wall Street has always been a metaphorical boxing ring. But Mr. Byrne, 50, is perhaps the finance world’s biggest real-life booster of mixed martial arts, the combat sport that combines elements of wrestling, karate, Brazilian jujitsu and Muay Thai boxing.
Before work on a recent Monday morning, Mr. Byrne and Mr. Owings were sitting on a two-inch mat in Mushin Mixed Martial Arts, the gym on Fifth Avenue where they work out four or five days a week. Mr. Owings, a muscular man in a tight black T-shirt, was drinking a bottled yerba mate and praising his pupil’s progress.
“Rich went from being a guy who’d run from a fight to one who would stay and take it to you,” Mr. Owings said.
“Parenthetically, I don’t plan on getting in any street fights soon,” Mr. Byrne added with a laugh.
Mr. Byrne was introduced to mixed martial arts by two brothers, his clients at Deutsche Bank: Lorenzo J. Fertitta and Frank J. Fertitta III, who bought the Ultimate Fighting Championship franchise in 2001. Mr. Byrne helped them arrange a $350 million financing deal in 2007 and a $100 million loan in 2009.
The bank executive got into the sport after his running habit was curtailed by a hip injury. The Fertitta brothers connected Mr. Byrne with a trainer who recommended Mr. Owings, and the two began kickboxing and jujitsu lessons.
“It’s like if I were being trained in baseball by Jeter, A-Rod or other people of that caliber,” Mr. Byrne said of his training team, which has at various points included notable fighters like Sean Hinds, Chris Encarnacion, John Danaher, John Cholish and Renzo Gracie.
Mr. Byrne enjoyed his martial arts lessons, but finding a good training space proved difficult.
“I tried different places,” Mr. Byrne said, “but none of them had exactly the right formula of what I wanted. Some weren’t that clean, some just had a bunch of, I wouldn’t say thugs, but guys who wanted to fight.”
Chester Higgins Jr./The New York TimesRichard J. Byrne, chief executive of Deutsche Bank Securities, opened his own gym, Mushin Mixed Martial Arts.
So he decided to build his own gym. Last year, he financed the construction of Mushin, which derives its name from a Zen concept meaning “empty mind.” He brought in Mr. Owings and several other prominent fighters to run the 2,500-square-foot training space, in which he is the sole investor. Mr. Byrne declined to say how much he had invested in Mushin, but said that it was “still less than joining a Hamptons golf club.”
In addition to Mr. Byrne’s regimen, Mushin provides private, semiprivate and group lessons for aspiring fighters, as well as casual exercise buffs. It also hosts Model Fit, a conditioning class intended for female models. The gym caters to white-collar clients, Mr. Byrne said, with top-of-the-line equipment, boxing gear imported from Thailand and mats that are cleaned many times a day to avoid bacterial infections.
The result, Mr. Byrne said, is “a place that, if nobody ever came, would be my ultimate toy.”
Mr. Byrne has become something of a mixed martial arts evangelist on Wall Street. He has brought many of his colleagues and clients to Mushin, even though only “seven or eight have stuck.” And he reports that the Zen-like skills required for fighting have helped him in other areas.
“If I’ve learned one thing, it’s the ability to relax under pressure,” he said. “It’s definitely made me a better banker.”
Last year, Mr. Byrne tested his skills at a mixed martial arts competition. He entered the 47-and-older division. But the day before the event, he was told that since he was the only registrant in that age group, he had won by default. The same thing happened with the next two age divisions until, finally, he was placed in the 27-and-over division, where he was ousted in the first round.
“I lost my first match, but I’m still a three-time gold medalist,” he said.
On a recent afternoon, hours before flying to Frankfurt for Deutsche Bank’s annual conference, Mr. Byrne was practicing his grappling moves on a Mushin trainer. He grunted, wheeled around and took the trainer into an arm-bar hold, letting out a satisfied grunt. When asked whether his goal was to beat Mr. Owings in a match, Mr. Byrne laughed and, in true martial arts style, deferred to his teacher.
“I’m hoping that one day Erik will decide to take five years off, and then have temporary paralysis in his arms,” he said. “That would almost be a fair fight.”
Off The Clock is a new DealBook column that features the extracurricular hobbies, passions and interests of Wall Street professionals. If you or someone you know would like to be featured, e-mail your suggestion to offtheclock@nytimes.com.
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