Yes, it is around.
Where: Finland.
What is it?
Pretty much what the name implies. It’s a hybrid sport combining chess and boxing, one that the organizers claim is the ultimate test of brains and brawn. Competitors play a round of chess and then box the living crap out of each other.
The game is split into 11 four-minute alternating rounds of chess and boxing, starting and ending with the chess. At the end of the chess round, the board is removed from the boxing ring and the competitors then beat the piss out of each other for a further four minutes. Then the board is replaced and the thinking caps come back out. Winning comes either from a checkmate or a knockout.
You immediately see the flaw in the rules: A good boxer can simply sleepwalk through the opening chess round, then beat his opponent unconscious once the boxing starts. In other words, it’s possible to win without knowing anything at all about chess.
Origins:
The game in it’s current format came from the mind of Serbian cartoonist Enki Bilal, who penned a graphic novel featuring the game in 1992, but purists argue that the game was originally conceived in the 1991 Finnish film Uuno Turhapuro, herra Helsingin herra, in which a man makes chess moves over a hands-free telephone headset while simultaneously beating the shit out of another man. This makes one wonder why they don't do actual chess boxing that way, but who are we to tell them how to do their jobs.
Interesting fact:
Chess boxing was the inspiration for The Wu-Tang Clan song “Da Mystery of Chessboxin’” from their debut album, a fact made very evident by the lyric "Steamrollin niggaz like a 18-wheeler/with the drunk driver drivin, there's no survivin'."
Tuesday, 2 October 2007
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