Trading punches

New York Stock Exchange trader Michael Mulroy is punching furiously, each of his jabs landing with a thud that echoes across the cavernous room.

Mulroy isn’t beating up another trader, and he’s not even on the exchange floor.

Instead, he’s sparring with his trainer at a nearby boxing club that has become a refuge for stressed-out traders and others on Wall Street.

Though golf has long been the pastime of choice for the Wall Street crowd, boxing is catching on among a few as a way to blow off steam. Some even say the sport has made them better at their day jobs.

“I think a lot of Wall Streeters are drawn to it because of the mental toughness it brings,” said Frank Randazzo, 44, an options broker. “I have a big advantage over the out-of-shape, unmotivated or mentally weak colleague.”

The Trinity Boxing Club in Lower Manhattan where Mulroy and his fellow traders work out is a far cry from the upscale fitness gyms that dot the financial district.

Trinity eschews saunas, fancy treadmills and high-tech weight equipment. Instead, it has two boxing rings and plenty of punching bags. For those wanting to bulk up, there’s a full complement of sledgehammers to swing, truck tires to toss and even empty beer kegs to lift.

Many of the club’s Wall Street clientele have defected from high-end gyms in search of a greater challenge, said Trinity owner Martin Snow.

“The guys who are successful down here are high rollers, thrill seekers and risk takers,” Snow said. “These guys thrive on competition, on being better than the other guy, and that goes hand-in-hand with boxing.”

Snow said he opened a boxing camp last year in Studio City where boxers are put through rigorous workouts but live in an opulent house on a hillside. Snow said he launched that operation because several of his Manhattan clients split their time between the East and West coasts.

Boxing also offers a much-needed release valve from pressure-packed Wall Street jobs. That’s especially true these days for NYSE traders, whose livelihoods are steadily being encroached upon by electronic stock trading.

“A lot of people have lost their jobs. It’s not a happy atmosphere,” said Andrew Patti, a 46-year-old NYSE floor broker. “This helps relieve a lot of stress.”

Floor broker Tom Bove seconded that idea.

“If we don’t take out our aggression here we’d take it out on another trader on the trading floor,” Bove joked.

Wall Streeters appreciate the fact that boxing demands total concentration, thus forcing them to stop thinking about their jobs, said John E. Oden, an executive at a New York investment firm and author of “White Collar Boxing: One Man’s Journey from the Office to the Ring” (Hatherleigh Press, 2005).

Until he entered the ring, Oden had trouble getting his mind off work, even while gazing down from scenic mountaintops on ski vacations in Aspen, Colo.

“You need a release and it needs to be a strong release,” Oden said. “When you’re boxing, you’re not thinking about anything but that.”

Many traders say they were first drawn to boxing for the physical workout and then got hooked on the adrenaline rush and excitement that comes with the sport.

Mulroy notes that when he’s trading stocks, “there’s a chance I could make or lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. I’m not nervous about that one bit. But when you get in the ring and spar with somebody you don’t know, you’re nervous.”

Currency trader Emilio Debueriis often entertains hedge-fund clients for whom he executes trades. As an alternative to lavish dinners, he’s taken clients to matches of fighters he’s met at the club. Sometimes the bouts are at Trinity, but the better fighters have also been in the ring at the venerable Roseland Ballroom and even Madison Square Garden.

“You get away from the typical Wall Street dinner where everyone is sitting with stuffed shirts,” Debueriis said. “You go to a boxing match -- it’s a more relaxed atmosphere. It’s like you go out as friends rather than as a client.”

Patti and Mulroy became friends in the unlikeliest of ways -- fighting in a “grudge match” at Trinity.

The two men used to encounter each other on the NYSE floor, and never got along, Mulroy said. He chalked it up to a personality clash, and said Patti challenged him to a fight one day.

“He said, ‘Let’s take it outside right now.’ I said, ‘No, let’s do it in the ring for charity.’ ”

Tickets went for $200 and sold out in a day. A few weeks later, both men climbed into the ring -- preceded by gag videos documenting their preparation and training regimens.

Mulroy’s depicted him waking in the middle of the night and shadowboxing with a faux “I Love $” tattoo plastered on his arm. Patti’s showed him pounding sides of beef at a slaughterhouse.

In the three-round match, Patti prevailed in a decision handed down by Snow. But both men were bloodied.

That’s the downside for Wall Streeters.

“I had a huge black eye when I came out of the ring,” Mulroy said of one sparring session, “and I had to go to two black-tie events that weekend.”

walter.hamilton@latimes.com