10 Ludicrous Sports You've Probably Never Heard Of

A bizarre hybrid of the cerebral, strategic game of chess and the sweet science of boxing, chessboxing is claimed to be “the ultimate challenge for both body and mind”.

Well, the jury’s out on that one. What we do know is that chessboxing was invented by a Dutch performance artist named Iepe Rubingh in 2003, who became the first world champion and currently runs both the World Chess Boxing Organisation and Chess Boxing Global, the marketing corporation that makes money out of the sport. Rubingh himself seems to have gotten the idea from a comic book.

A match is split into four minute rounds, alternating between six sit down rounds of chess and five rounds of boxing, with the winner being decided either by knockout or checkmate, depending on which round it is. The idea is that, given the adrenaline factor, the chess game becomes considerably more fraught than it would ordinarily, while the boxing is made more frenetic by the distraction created by the intervening rounds of chess… and, of course, later rounds of chess become increasingly difficult to navigate the more punchdrunk you become.

The appeal is fairly evident, but whether it extends beyond novelty value is another question entirely. Chessboxing is gaining ground, however, having extended its reach internationally to become a global concern, albeit on a small scale so far.