About

Charlie Zelenoff, also known as the TikTok Karate Kid, is a content creator who makes trolling content revolving around MMA and boxing who pretends to be a skilled fighter. Early content of Charlie's was initially posted to YouTube in the 2010s, later spreading to TikTok as he found a new audience in the 2020s that led to a resurgence in his online virality and clout.

Online History

Early footage of Charlie Zelenoff's first fights have been lost, or uploaded with dates that are unable to be confirmed, but on November 10th, 2011, the earliest confirmed footage of Charlie Zelenoff fighting was uploaded to YouTube by the channel Fated2Triumph,^[1] featuring Charlie fighting against Floyd Mayweather Sr. The footage, which shows a sparring match between the two that ends with Floyd walking away and getting hit from behind by Charlie, was viewed over 7.4 million times in 12 years (shown below).

Since that clip, Charlie Zelenoff, who often goes by Charlie Z, would upload different videos and boxing hype to YouTube in which he'd talk about being an undefeated boxer in what he called the "Underground Boxing Federation" (UBF). Attempts to document Charlie's early career were made, with the YouTuber Cloud5146^[2] uploading an hour-and-a-half-long video history of Zelenoff on June 25th, 2016, featuring a lot of the earliest footage of Zelenoff's attempt at boxing (shown below).

TikTok

Starting in 2020, clips and different bits of content from Charlie Zelenoff's earlier years made their way to TikTok, where it started to spread and introduce him to a new audience. For example, on December 30th, 2020, TikToker @Boxnasium^[3] uploaded a clip of Zelenoff fighting and losing to Wilder, who claims that Charlie was racially abusing him prior to the clip (shown below).

On June 7th, 2023, TikToker @MM100boxing^[4] uploaded a compilation of various clips from Zelenoff's 2023 career in boxing while calling him one of the weakest men on the planet. In the TikTok, which is edited to show various different clips of him punching people and then stopping, compliments him while calling him out, and earned over 100,000 views in four months (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References