Hamid Adem
Contributor
Chessboxing is a unique sport that was created and based out of Berlin; it is spreading all over Europe and has the potential to become a new global sports trend. When a person thinks of chessboxing the first thing that may come to mind is a kung fu movie or a Wu-Tang song, but chessboxing is a sport that combines the sweet science with the world’s oldest strategy game; competitors box for a round and then play chess during the break.
“Fighting is done in the ring and wars are waged on the board,” says Lepe Rubingh, the creator and president of the World Chessboxing Association.
First envisioned by Enki Bilal in 1992 in his graphic novel Froid Equateur, it would be Rubingh who would later bring the concept to life. In the graphic novel, Enki had a boxing match that followed a chess match, but Lepe thought this would be impractical and instead sought to alternate rounds of chess and boxing.
Two opponents start the match with chess, with each round lasting four minutes. After each chess round the board is removed, then the two competitors engage in boxing for two-minute rounds. There are six rounds of chess and five of boxing. Competitors can win by way of knockout, checkmate, referee’s decision, or by exceeding the allotted 12 minutes for an entire match on the chessboard. If there is a stalemate in chess, the scores from the boxing rounds are used to determine a winner. If it is a tie, the player with the black pieces wins.
You might be thinking: why don’t regular boxers join and easily defeat these average joes in the ring? To compete in chessboxing, you must be a Class A strength chess player. This is to ensure that everyone has a fair chance in competing in the ring and as well as keeping an emphasis on the chess.
“Street fights are not common in Berlin, but it only demonstrates the need for a sport like chessboxing,” says Rubingh. “It is ugly to see such violence on the streets, but in a regulated environment it becomes about self-discipline, controlling the mind and body, and from the spectators’ perspective, chessboxing is highly entertaining performance art.”
Rubingh spent most of his 20s playing professional chess and competing in amateur boxing. Now he is a competitor within the same sport that he helped to create with the help of Enki. Rubingh reminds me of Vince McMahon, the owner of WWE, who was famous for performing in his own sport.
Professional actor turned chessboxing entrepreneur Andreas Dilschneider says: “If you think about it, chess and boxing have many things in common, they are both about giving and taking, someone makes a move and you have to react, and you always have to have the goal of winning in mind.”
Chessboxing, as you might imagine attracts a lot of different people from different backgrounds but the one thing they all share is a competitive spirit and a willingness to try new things.
To me, chessboxing and other extreme sports sit right at the borderline of the aggressiveness that a society should allow,” says Rubingh. “I think it’s better not to fight in a bar or on the street, also better not to wage war in the Middle East for that matter, if we can control aggression, rather than simply repressing it.”
Is chessboxing going to be a new ultimate sport that takes the world by surprise or is it going to be another fad that will disappear in time? Only time will tell if it’s a going to be checkmate or another knockout.
