Issue 157

August 2017

How ONE Championship founder Chatri Sityodtong went from a life of poverty to founding Asia’s top MMA promotion.

The rise of ONE Championship is a pretty remarkable story in itself, yet the rise of its founder and owner, Chatri Sityodtong, is even more incredible – utter rags to untold riches. Yet the 46-year-old who is half-Thai and half-Jese, was named by Forbes last year as the ‘Most Influential Executive in Asian MMA’, who is known within the sport as the ‘Most Powerful Person in Asian MMA’ and in the top three ‘Most Influential Global Leaders in MMA’, was once so poor as a student at Harvard Business School, he eked out an existence on a pittance. He even had his penniless mother sleeping in his dormitory with him. Now, 15 years later, his fortune stands at many millions of US dollars, and his promotion is on target to be worth more than a billion.

From small acorns...

Chatri told me his incredible story, underlining that a love of martial arts had carried the Kru in Muay Thai and blue belt in BJJ through his bare-cupboard days. Born in 1971 in Pattaya, Thailand, he had been an ordinary kid. He lived a comfortable life for many years – until everything was turned upside down.

“Things went bad for my family in the Asian financial crisis. That was before I entered Harvard. Basically, the family business was wiped out. Penniless, homeless, jobless, everything. Later on, my father abandoned us,” he explained, as we sit in the opulence of the Four Seasons Hotel in London’s swanky Mayfair, with one of the most fascinating people I’ve ever met in fight sports unveiling a salutary life story.

It’s a real fighter’s tale. From nothing, he lined his burgeoning bank balance as a hedge fund manager on Wall Street and Silicon Valley, once out of Harvard. He was good at it. Very good at it. Buying and selling in capital markets and training himself for an entrepreneurship in the start-up world, he traded companies all over the globe and made thousands of investments over a 10-year career. Then he decided to turn into something good. For himself and others.

“When I look back at my life, I feel so full of gratitude for all the bad things that have happened to me. The fact I had to survive on four dollars a day and my parents went bust and I left Thailand in shame and poverty, my family name destroyed, dealing with all that negative energy. It taught me so many amazing things about life.”

The tough times were the best times, perhaps. “It taught me about courage and work ethic. And conquering odds. But it also taught me about friendship and family and love,” he explained, adding that his first son, Tyrus, was born just a few weeks ago. The businessman now hops the globe between homes in Boston and Singapore.

“It taught me about sacrifice. A lot of things I feel so grateful for. I really don’t think I would have been able to succeed in life without having gone through that fire. That was my test in life. If I had failed that, I don’t deserve any of my dreams. I think in some weird way, the universe or God or whatever said, ‘Here’s your test. If you pass it, good things will come. If you succumb to it, then you don’t deserve good things.’”

Luck, fortune – call it what you will – but good things came eventually, but not before those days in Harvard, when life seemed so different. “I had a lot of inner turmoil before I decided I was going to go to America and roll the dice. The last thing I wanted was to be in a situation where I went to Harvard, took out a big student loan and then failed to graduate for whatever reason. My family would have been even worse off.

“At the lowest point, we were surviving on four dollars a day in America and trying to figure out what was going to happen. I ate one meal a day and I would ration it throughout the day. At the time, I didn’t even have enough money to pay for school fees or books or anything like that. I was literally scratching my head trying to figure out how I’d pay for the next semester. At the same time, I didn’t have any confidence in myself. I always felt like a fish out of water at Harvard Business School because I was never academically gifted. I was the poorest kid there and I felt like I didn’t belong.” He was wracked “full of fear and insecurity and doubts”, he explains.

“Even in my first semester, I remember wondering if I’d made the right choice.” Then his mother came to stay with him, sharing his dormitory. “My mum really pushed me to make something of myself and bring the family out of poverty. I have a younger brother and through the power of my maternal love, she pushed me off the proverbial cliff to see if I could fly.”

His mother’s love, though, and his dedication to martial arts carried him through that time. “I was very blessed that I had thousands of hours of martial arts training that had already forged in me an unbreakable warrior spirit, a desire to conquer adversity and a desire to continue self-improvement. I didn’t have massive confidence, but it was more of a warrior’s attitude in life.”

Muay Thai, he says, taught him so much. “Muay Thai in Thailand is very much our greatest national treasure. It’s not about fighting. Muay Thai is actually about unleashing human potential. It gives its practitioners integrity, humility, work ethic, discipline, kindness, so many attributes. The sheer toughness of training breaks you down in that regard. If you don’t have those attributes you’ll definitely fail as a Muay Thai fighter. We celebrate the beauty of it – the cultural values it imparts on its practitioners.”

…Mighty oaks grow

Driven by the values Sityodtong lives by, ONE Championship has grown exponentially in just a few short years and is expected to be valued at more than $1 billion within the next 12-18 months. Not bad for a promotion that began in July 2011. It’s an incredible story of success – not unlike its founder’s.

“Often, I sit there and think I’m the luckiest guy on the planet. At the end of the day, I get to do what I love every single day with people I love. In my small way, I’ll be able to make a positive impact on the world. People think, ‘Oh, ONE Championship is just an entertainment company.’ No, it’s a vehicle to showcase to the world the incredible life stories of our world champions who have overcome poverty, orphanages, adversity, and become world champion against incredible odds and through work ethic and discipline.

“That’s exactly my inspiration for what I do and what ignites my soul today,” he adds. “Do I feel like I’m the right person for this? Yes. How many people on this earth have 30 years of martial arts experience, 20 years of business experience, have a Harvard MDA, have the capital, have the connections, have everything to pull it off and have the greatest team in the world to support and execute on the vision?

“Of course I’m the luckiest guy. If this occurred at any other time in history, I don’t think it would happen. If it was 10 or 15 years earlier, when I wasn’t as successful, I might not have had the capital to pull it off . It’s a confluence of perfect timing, perfect events, being the right person with the right skill set and the right experience, the right depth of knowledge for martial arts and business, to be able to pull this off . I do what I love. On event days when I sit there and there are 20,000 screaming fans and I look around, I can’t believe this is my life.”

There is a distinction he wishes to draw between what he aims to do and what the UFC is doing – a distinction based on his upbringing as a Muay Thai practitioner. “There is a 180-degree difference between UFC’s approach and our approach. UFC has worked very well in the western hemisphere. They tend to focus on conflict, controversy, glorifying violence, glorifying blood, disrespecting fighters, a lot of negative energies. Conor McGregor throwing a water bottle at a press conference or saying F-you – that would never happen at ONE Championship.

“The UFC has marketed itself very much as a sport. I would say ONE Championship is true martial arts. We are not about all those things. We are about showcasing inspiration. The life stories, the incredible adversity they had to overcome. We’re story-telling our heroes’ lives so we can inspire billions of people in Asia to live a better life. We’re trying to ignite Asia with inspiration and hope and strength for everyday life. Not because we want everybody to become martial artists. Our sporting heroes often just become symbolic heroes for life, so that we can overcome our own adversities.”

He insists, though, that he has “a tremendous respect for the UFC” and how it has worked in the western hemisphere. “I think this is the reason why ONE has thrived in Asia and the UFC has faltered there, precisely because our DNA connects with the Asian audience: four billion people. Our DNA is about kindness, humility, inspiration, about true martial arts.

“It’s not about in your face, I’m going to F you up. It’s about I came from being an orphan, with my own two hands; nobody gave me an opportunity, I didn’t get to go to school, my parents are illiterate, I was abandoned as a child and I have to somehow figure out a way to climb out of poverty. Now I have won these world titles it is my duty to inspire my nation. This is the DNA of ONE Championship.”

The DNA of Chatri Sityodtong includes a significant number of martial arts genes. He still trains in BJJ and Muay Thai every day. He also founded Evolve MMA, a chain of academies that are home to one of the leading teams in the sport. Dozens of world champions from several disciplines can be found on its mats and in its rings. It has become a destination for fighters from all over the world, more casual practitioners and even beginners looking to learn new skills.

Its employees and athletes would also be the first to shout about Sityodtong’s generous spirit. Not only are they given an incredible working environment they receive incredible rewards. Their compensation matches or eclipses their contemporaries around the world and the perks are incredible. Last year, just to say thank you for its most successful year of growth and achievement yet, their boss dropped $500,000 and flew everyone to the Maldives for an all-inclusive five-star holiday.

It’s not just his employees who benefit from his incredibly generous spirit, either. He is also driven to touch thousands of young lives through his philanthropic endeavors.

“Through my companies, we donate money, time, training, free martial arts training, movie nights and barbecues, for a bunch of organizations. My big soft spot is helping kids who have not necessarily been given a fair shake in life, in any way I can alleviate their situation. I was fortunate to escape poverty. This is part of my life.”

Success, he insists, must be passed on. “Money doesn’t really mean a lot to me. Money is a by-product of doing good in the world. What means a lot to me is in my 80 years on this earth, did I leave this place a better place? That’s much more meaningful to me than money. I believe that’s the biggest difference in terms of our DNA at ONE Championship compared to our counterparts.

“Their central focus is very different. Ours is a lasting legacy that inspires billions of people to live a better life and be united by inspiration, hope and strength so they can dream bigger and be more in life. That’s what ONE Championship is about.” Some dream. Some man.