When Calvin Cheng wanted to turn his Muay Thai hobby into something more serious, he moved from the Netherlands to Thailand. Muay Thai—Thailand’s national combat sport—is known as “the art of eight limbs” and is a punishing form of kickboxing in which fighters use fists, feet, elbows, and knees to batter their opponents. Long a core discipline of mixed martial arts (M.M.A.)—and a major part of the U.F.C.—it has recently found a new audience among young Western men chasing authentic violence, old-fashioned manliness, and social-media glory.
That audience has not arrived from nowhere. As M.M.A. has migrated from the cage to the podcast studio, some say its culture has been hijacked by the manosphere: a world of self-improvement gurus and chest-thumping influencers like Joe Rogan (who commentates on the U.F.C.) and Andrew Tate (a former professional kickboxer). Both offer combat sports as a cure for modern-male softness.
