Posted on 07/07/2008 2:25:51 AM PDT by Schnucki
A RUSSIAN man has been crowned world champion in the novelty sport of chess boxing, a game that requires equal skill at moving pawns and throwing punches.
Mathematics student Nikolai Sazhin, 19, competing under the name "The President'' knocked out a 37-year-old German policeman Frank Stoldt, who served as a peacekeeper in Kosovo until recently.
The loser said he was simply too punch-drunk to fend off checkmate.
"I took a lot of body-blows in the fourth round and that affected my concentration. That's why I made a big mistake in the fifth round: I did not see him coming for my king,'' he said.
Berlin is home to the world's biggest chess boxing club with some 40 members and it is in an old freight station here that the two men settled the matter early yesterday.
The match began over a chess board set up on a low table in the middle of a boxing ring.
Stripped to the waist, wearing towels around their shoulders and headphones playing the lulling sound of a moving train to drown out the baying crowd, the men played for four minutes. Then off came their reading glasses and on went the gloves and the mouthguards.
For three minutes they beat each other and then, when the bell went, the chess board was back in the ring and they picked up the gentlemanly game where they had left off.
"This is the hard part, you are out of breath but you have to keep your wits about you,'' said David Steppeler, a 33-year-old instructor at the local chess boxing club.
"It is especially hard for the one who has to play first. He can easily make a false move, and in chess this is fatal. So in training we toughen people by making them do
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Watch it at 9 PM Eastern on ESPN238.
Hockey.
LOL!
LOL here too!
A friend of mine came up with combining sumo and hockey - called it Sockey.
The champion’s strategy was to follow up a sharp left jab with a mean right rook...
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