Chessboxing

I have a new favorite sport. I like to find bizarre sports, gain a vague appreciation for them, learn how to play them and, eventually, champion them to anyone who will listen to me. I successfully did this with disc golf; a sport which has quadrupled in size since 1997 (Cold Pizza just did a feature on it on ESPN 2, maybe you saw it). My new favorite sport is chessboxing. At first glance, chess boxing seems like something Mike O’Malley (CBS’ “Yes Dear”) would have conjured up while he was hosting Nickelodeon’s GUTS (in case you can’t remember, or just don’t know, GUTS was a version of American Gladiators for children, reruns can be seen on the cable network Nick GAS). But alas, chessboxing is very real; I know this because they have their own “official” website. It is wcbo.org (World Chess Boxing Organization). Here are the rules, as per the WCBO website:

“In a chessboxing fight two opponents play alternating rounds of chess and boxing. The contest starts with a round of chess, followed by a boxing round, followed by another round of chess and so on. In every round of chess the FIDE rules for a Ã?´Blitz gameÃ?´ apply, in every boxing round the AIBA rules apply with the following extensions and modifications: In a contest there shall be 11 rounds, 6 rounds of chess, 5 rounds of boxing. A round of chess takes 4 minutes. Each competitor has 12 minutes on the chess timer. As soon as the time runs out the game is over.

A round of boxing takes 2 minutes. Between rounds there is a 1 minute pause, during which competitors change their gear. The contest is decided by: checkmate (chess round), exceeding the time limit (chess round), retirement of an opponent (chess or boxing round), KO (boxing round), or referee decision (boxing round). If the chess game ends in a stalement, the opponent with the higher score in boxing wins. If there is an equal score, the opponent with the black pieces wins.”

That last part struck me as a little odd. I mean, after all that they decide who wins by what color chess pieces you have? That sounds pretty harsh. In that scenario, I think they should just end the match in a draw (but I’m taking that up with the WCBO on my own).

And the WCBO is truly a world organization. Apparently, before the WBCO’s inception, there were two other, European chessboxing outfits. Of course I’m talking about the CBCB and BCBO (or the Chessboxing Club: Berlin and the Bulgarian Chessboxing Organization).

The WCBO’s motto is “Fighting is done in the ring and wars are waged on the board”. I like the sound of that, it really sums up why chessboxing is so appealing to me. It truly is a combination of “the #1 fighting sport and the #1 thinking sport”. I am thinker and a fighter (I am also a lover, but that doesn’t really apply to chessboxing).

I can totally understand how people might think this stupid. It’s like, if we’ve got chessboxing where will it stop? Checkerswrestling? Parcheesitennis? Unojudo?

I realize I might be blowing some people’s minds with all this, but that’s just too bad. I think chessboxing has a legitimate shot at making it. The idea that contestants are bashing each other’s brains in and then are sitting down to play a game that is exclusively about the brain and strategy intrigues me to no end. You can’t just be awesome at one or the other. If you are a great boxer but have no chess skills to speak of, you better knock out your opponent in the first or second boxing round (and vice versa for chess geeks who’d be dead ducks in the ring).

Some may say that it’s bad enough we have hacks out there inventing new words (chessboxing); do we really need to combine athletic events with board games? Grammar enthusiasts around the globe may see this whole movement has a platform for advocating the use of the hyphen (chess-boxing).

I for one am not worried about these sentiments (if they really exist, and I am fairly certain they don’t). According to the WCBO website, there is a 2006 chessboxing event in the works for New York- my neck of the woods. And I am going to try my darndest to either a) play in this event or b) watch it from the safety of the stands (the latter seems way more probable but not nearly as fun). So wish me luck on my quest to become Chessboxing Champion of the World, I undoubtedly will need it.