The Tastemakers Society

Chess Boxing is not a joke it’s for real and is gaining some popularity. Now I know this is a little different from what we post here on TTS, but the story was intriguing enough that I thought you all should know about this new sport trying to bubble into more of a mainstream arena. Chess boxing has been featured on ESPN and as of now has over 150 competitors, the first official match was in Amsterdam 2003, but chess-boxing was first mentioned in, The Nikopol Trilogy, a 1992 comic book by Enki Bilal. The World Chess Boxing Organization sets up matches over in Europe and official training facilities are in Berlin, London, and Sofia, Bulgaria. So this is how a match works, the competitors rotate between 3 minute boxing rounds and 4 minute speed chess rounds, with 1 minute breaks in between to get gloves off to get back to chess game. You either win by knockout, checkmate or referee’s decision. I don’t know how to play chess, but I do love boxing, even though this sounds odd and would take time to adjust into a entertaining sport to watch and follow, I could see this growing, and myself becoming a fan of it, maybe.

via: time