Chess boxing
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Chess boxing, or chessboxing is a hybrid sport that combines two traditional pastimes: chess and boxing.
History
The concept of chessboxing was first coined in the 1979 kung fu film Mystery of Chessboxing made by Joseph Kuo. The first chessboxing event was put on by Dutch performance artist Iepe Rubingh. originates from the 1992 comic Froid Équateur, written by French comic book artist Enki Bilal, that portrays a chessboxing world championship. In the comic book version, however, the opponents fight an entire boxing match before they face each other in a game of chess. Finding this to be impractical, Rubingh developed the idea further until it turned into the competitive sport that chessboxing is today, with alternating rounds of chess and boxing and a detailed set of rules and regulations.
An earlier version of combining chess and boxing was said to have taken place in a boxing club outside London in the late 1970s. The Robinson brothers were in the habit of playing a round of chess against one another after a training session at their boxing club. However, no direct correlation can be made between the Robinson brothers' chess playing and chessboxing. The same goes for the kung fu movie Mystery of Chessboxing as well as the Wu-Tang Clan song "Da Mystery of Chessboxin'" (1993).
The early history of the chessboxing concept, sport, and rules is presented in an online article on the blog Groupchess.
See also
