Where to, Parker. Issue 5 | Summer 2017

sport
Chess boxing
competitors fight each
other in alternating
rounds of chess and
boxing.
This must surely be the ultimate combination of
brains and brawn. Right now, their chests heaving,
their upper bodies dripping with sweat, Greg Drach
and Danny ‘Boy’ Bent are seated in the centre of a
boxing ring, hunched over a chess board, their faces
clenched in concentration. Two minutes earlier they
had been punching seven bells out of each other in
the very same ring during a bout of boxing.
The unlikely duo – Drach, a digital product
manager, and Bent, a writer, both from London –
are the headline bout at the London Chessboxing
season finale, staged at York Hall in east London’s
Bethnal Green. Chess boxing is a little known but
intriguing hybrid sport that sees two contenders
alternating rounds of boxing and chess, with just a
few seconds’ break between each round. Winners
are normally declared through checkmate or time
penalty in the chess, or through stoppage or points
in the boxing. It’s rare that a knockout occurs.
To the uninitiated it looks surreal; like a Little
Britain sketch about eccentric British sports, perhaps.
But once you tune in to the unusual juxtaposition of
chess tactics and boxing aggression, it all starts to
make sense. As a spectator sport it’s entrancing.
Winners are normally declared
through checkmate or time
penalty in the chess, or
through stoppage or points in
the boxing.
30 where to, parker?
Parker_Issue_5_Book.indb 30 29/06/2017 12:25