Can you be brainy and brawny1 at the same time? The sport of chess boxing suggests you can.
The former boxing world heavyweight champion, Lennox Lewis, is keen to dismiss the idea that if youre muscular you cant be smart enough to succeed in a cerebral2 game like chess a sport hes enthusiastic about. When Lewiss chess adversaries3 find out he used to box, theyre certain theyll defeat him. And when I beat them, theyre upset, he says.
In chess boxing two competitors play alternating rounds of chess and boxing. After trying to bruise4 each other around the face and body, they remove a glove and continue the duel5, sweating and panting, over the 64 squares of the chessboard. This continues until a winner is declared by knockout, checkmate or a points victory.
This unusual sport, which is taking off in countries as perse as India and Germany, was created by artists. Dutch performing artist Iepe Rubingh invented it in 2003, drawing inspiration from the comic Cold Equator by Enki Bilal.
The chess grandmaster Jonathan Rowson says that boxing is the sport which most closely re百度竞价推广bles chess. In part its the purity of the competition, he says. There is virtually nothing to mediate6 the one-to-one combat. Boxing has gloves, but there are no balls, no goalposts or racquets.
Rowson concludes that in chess, defeated players have nothing to blame other than their own lack of mental ability.
And a defeat can be crushing, according to the Russian former chess world champion Garry Kasparov. He described the boardgame as the most violent sport there is, which aims to destroy the adversarys ego7.
Lennox Lewis doesnt go that far, but the love of chess helped him during his tough upbringing in London. He says its all about strategy: When someone calls you a name, you want to punch them out but chess teaches you to think through the next moves.
So next time you see a muscular boxer8, dont dismiss them as a simpleton. They might be able to hurt not only your face, but also your pride.