Former professional kickboxer and hugely followed online influencer Andrew Tate is back in the spotlight following his detention in Romania for 30 days at the request of police.
Tate and his brother, Tristan, were arrested as part of an investigation into allegations of human trafficking and rape. The pair were detained with two others by a court in Bucharest and intend to appeal against the detention after it was extended to 30 days.
What is Tate’s sporting background? Why is he such a controversial figure? Could he still fight KSI? Here’s what we know.
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Who is Andrew Tate?
Born Emory Andrew Tate III on December 1, 1986 in Washington, D.C., Tate was raised in Chicago and Goshen by a father who was an international chess master and a mother who worked as a catering assistant.
After his parents divorced, Tate moved to England with his mother as a youngster and started kickboxing as a teenager, swiftly making his way up the domestic ranks.
As well as being an accomplished fighter, Tate is far better known as a brash businessman who offers uncompromising advice to men on subjects such as relationships and money.
On his website, Tate offers to teach men how to build wealth by joining initiatives including The War Room, a global organisation that claims to have bases in 70 countries. His Hustlers University is a subscription site accessible for $50 a month.
“I grew up broke and now I am a multimillionaire,” Tate says on the website, which also sells merchandise and supplements. “Two brothers, single-mother household, who grew up broke as a joke.
“I teach the deserving the secrets to modern wealth creation. I broke The Matrix and I will teach you how. When rich people say how to get rich, 99% don’t listen. That’s why the 1% are the 1%.”
Andrew Tate kickboxing record
After launching his career as a 20-year-old in 2007, Tate built a formidable kickboxing record that included 76 wins across 85 fights in more than 13 years in the ring.
“I just turned to training one step at a time and wanted to be good,” Tate told James English in 2021, adding that one of his key ambitions was to never work in a regular job. “You win, you win and you win again, you get a title shot and you win and before you know it, you’re up there.”
Tate took a “massive step up” by fighting Scott Gibson for the British light-heavyweight title in one of his first bouts, according to Sidekick Boxing, which says that he was stopped in the fourth round with an overhand right.
English titles at cruiserweight and light-heavyweight followed before Luton-based fighter Tate challenged Jean-Luc Benoit in France for governing body the ISKA’s world honours.
“My first ever world title shot was on three days’ notice,” he claimed. “I had to lose nine kilos in three days. I turned up, was completely destroyed by the weight loss, everybody expected me to lose and I won.
“They gave the decision to the other guy. It was in France, me against a French world champion, but they gave it to him. We submitted the video to the ISKA and they demanded a rematch because it was so obvious I won.”
That took place in Luton in 2011. “Without the big weight loss problem, I knocked him out in the eighth and became world champion for the first time,” recalled Tate. “It was good but I don’t ever feel like I’m satisfied. It was ‘okay, next’. I was always like that.”
Tate narrowly failed to claim the Showtime 85MAX world title against champion Sahak Parparyan in Belgium the following year, then lost in the final of Enfusion 3’s ‘Trial of the Gladiators’ series via a first-round flying knee KO.
That didn’t deter Tate from winning a second world title in France at cruiserweight via split decision and vying for Enfusion’s world champion tag in Slovakia in 2014, losing by decision in the semifinals.
One of the highlights of a career that most recently took in three fights in Romania was a victory over legendary kickboxer Wendell Roche in London in 2014, when Tate became only the second fighter of hundreds to succeed in knocking out the Amsterdam-based powerhouse.
Luton’s Storm Gym stable describes Tate as a “devastating” fighter with “countless knockouts to his name”.
“I’ve always felt, without sounding like a crazy conspiracy theorist… do you ever look around you at the world and feel kind of like we’re in The Matrix, like there’s something missing?” Tate suggested to English, speaking in philosophical terms familiar to his admirers.
“Everything seems superficial. I was always looking for this secret. I wouldn’t say happiness, but I was always trying to break out of the nine-to-five, normal monotony of day-to-day life. For a long time, I thought fighting was my way out.”
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Andrew Tate MMA record
Tate started out in MMA, fighting six times for the Ultimate Warrior promotion in Essex between 2006 and 2010, including an amateur bout with future UFC fighter Luke Barnatt.
Barnatt and Tate later became sparring partners, with Tate said to have broken one of Barnatt’s ribs with a training kick.
Tate beat Matthew Wilkins by decision and knocked out Shane Kavanagh either side of a defeat on the cards to Reza Meldavian as a professional MMA fighter.
As an amateur, Tate also beat Lee Mayo via guillotine choke and lost to William Morley by decision.
Why is Andrew Tate controversial?
Tate was removed from the UK series of reality TV show Big Brother in 2016 when a video emerged of him apparently beating a woman with a belt. Tate insisted the woman was a friend and that the video had been edited, saying that in fact the two “were joking”.
Domestic abuse charities had condemned several of Tate’s posts across his popular social media platforms, and he was banned from Twitter in 2017 after stating that rape victims “bear responsibility” for the attacks against them.
Tate has declared himself a misogynist but qualified his behaviour to the Guardian in 2022 by saying he was “playing a comedic character”.
Hello @GretaThunberg
I have 33 cars.
My Bugatti has a w16 8.0L quad turbo.
My TWO Ferrari 812 competizione have 6.5L v12s.
This is just the start.
Please provide your email address so I can send a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions. pic.twitter.com/ehhOBDQyYU
— Andrew Tate (@Cobratate) December 27, 2022
“Internet sensationalism has purported the idea that I’m anti-women when nothing could be further from the truth,” he added, saying that he has donated to charities benefiting women and is “genuinely innocent”.
In August 2022, Tate was banned from Facebook and Instagram for violating policies by owners Meta “on dangerous organisations and individuals”.
Tate had almost five million followers on Instagram, and content relating to him on TikTok has been viewed billions of times.
“Misogyny is a hateful ideology that is not tolerated on TikTok,” a spokesperson for the platform said. “We’ve been removing violative videos and accounts for weeks, and we welcome the news that other platforms are also taking action against this individual.”
After having a Twitter ban removed following Elon Musk’s takeover of the platform, Tate became involved in a spat with climate activist Greta Thunberg in December 2022, boasting about his collection of luxury cars while asking the then-teenager to provide her email address so he could send a list of their emissions.
Thunberg went viral with a response that was widely considered to have successfully mocked Tate, asking him to “enlighten” her by contacting the email address “smalld***[email protected]”.
Tate’s interviews with broadcasters such as Piers Morgan routinely attract millions of views. Before interviewing Tate in 2023, Morgan described his subject as “one of the most infamous men in the world” who was responsible for “misogynistic tirades”.
In the interview, Tate told Morgan that his views had been misrepresented by taking small excerpts from long-form content he had created, adding that no women had come forward to make claims of mistreatment against him.
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Why was Andrew Tate arrested?
Authorities arrested Tate and his brother, along with two other men, as part of an investigation into the actions of an alleged organised crime group. While Tate has not responded publicly to the accusations, a tweet from his official account shortly after his arrest said: “The Matrix sent their agents.”
In a statement, Romanian police said officers had identified six people who were allegedly “sexually exploited” by the suspected group.
Police alleged the victims were “recruited” by the British citizens, whom they said had given a false impression of desiring a relationship with them.
The statement alleged that the purported victims were later forced to perform in pornographic content under threat of violence.
The Tates’ lawyer, Eugen Vidineac, told Romanian outlet Gandul, as reported on January 9, that “the criminal investigation file has not been made available to us to ensure the effective defence of our clients”.
He added that “there is not a single piece of evidence apart from the victim’s statement that leads to the idea that a crime of rape was committed”. On the allegation of human trafficking, Vidineac said: “In my view, there is no evidence there either, and I’m talking about evidence leading, by itself or directly, to the formation of an opinion of reasonable suspicion regarding the commission of offences provided for and punishable by criminal law.”
Rumours quickly spread that police had identified Tate as being in Romania because of the details on a pizza box that was visible in his video response on Twitter to Thunberg.
Thunberg herself tweeted “this is what happens when you don’t recycle your pizza boxes”, and even Twitter CEO Elon Musk, whose posts relating to The Matrix appeared to have inspired Tate’s own output on the platform, chimed in by saying: “Sometimes it’s just better to make pizza at home.”
In reality, the pizza box is not thought to have any relevance to the arrest.
Dam so apparently it’s true Andrew tate and his brother both arrested pic.twitter.com/8cQIbQkLIt
— Greed🦠 (@GreedyAlmighty) December 29, 2022
Authorities in Romania are said to have seized some of the Tate brothers’ vehicles and properties and a court extended their detention from 24 hours to 30 days. The Tates are appealing against the seizure of goods and the detention extension.
Will Andrew Tate fight KSI?
Boxer and YouTuber KSI, whose real name is JJ Olatunji, has previously been tipped to fight Tate on the Misfits Boxing promotion of which he is part.
The company specialises in boxing matches between celebrities with little or unconventional experience of the discipline, although the smaller KSI has questioned whether he could bridge the 15kg difference in established fighting weights between the pair.
In response, Tate accused KSI of being scared of getting “hurt” and finding himself “cancelled”. “He wants to make money off his fans, scam them all and waste everybody’s time,” he told Mirror Fighting. “He knows with me it’s a real fight. Why take a real fight when he can beat up idiots for millions?”
KSI said he would “of course” be willing to fight Tate after his bout with Dillon Danis at Wembley Arena in January 2023. Danis withdrew from the event, meaning KSI will now fight Faze Temperrr.
“He’s been calling me out left, right and centre,” KSI told Kai Cenat in December 2022. “I’ve said I’ve wanted to fight Andrew Tate.”
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Andrew Tate vs Jake Paul: Will they fight?
Platform bans aside, rookie boxers Jake and Logan Paul are two of the only celebrities in the world with a social media pull comparable to Tate’s.
Logan Paul has spoken of his fantasy that he would choke Tate in 15 seconds if they met in an MMA fight, but Jake Paul looks far more likely to have the opportunity to beat Tate in the near future.
Negotiations have taken place between the younger Paul’s team and Tate, with rumours that the pair had planned to meet in February.
Negotiations. @MostVpromotions pic.twitter.com/PPDDgEpOZm
— Jake Paul (@jakepaul) November 10, 2022
They performed two mock face-offs in November 2022, one of which was ringside at boxing great Floyd Mayweather’s fight with YouTuber Deji.
Speaking of his hiatus from combat sports, Tate said to English: “I actually retired because I woke up one day, looked at my life and thought ‘I’m giving seven hours a day to fighting.’
JAKE PAUL X ANDREW TATE 👀
Who wants to see this fight? 🙋♂️
🥊 #MayweatherDeji
👀 LIVE NOW ON PPV
👉 Link In Bio
📺 Check Local Listings pic.twitter.com/tsc1pUuh2x— Global Titans Fight Series (@GlobalTitansFS) November 13, 2022
“If I were to put seven hours a day into something else, what else could I achieve? I had a little bit of money from fighting but I wasn’t balling. I wasn’t rich-rich.
“I thought, ‘what’s the point of being a world champion if I can’t buy Lambos on the debit card, right? What’s the point?’
“I thought, ‘I want to be rich now.’ That’s actually the reason I retired. I’m always chasing other things. Now I’ve got money, I want to fight again.”
Andrew Tate net worth
Tate has estimated that he is worth “easily” around $350 million. “Net worth is very difficult to quantify,” he added. “It is difficult because I think my companies are very difficult to evaluate. My companies rely so heavily on my brand that they’re very, very difficult to sell.
“If I have a company that makes $5m a month every month, pure profit, completely online… that’s a $300m-to-$400m company. But will anyone buy it if I’m not associated with it? It’s very difficult.”
That estimate increased to $710m in a tweet he deleted in December 2022, according to a report which said that Hustlers University had more than 108,000 subscribers and valued Tate’s car collection at $6m. Celebrity Net Worth values Tate at a more modest $50m.
