A Chessboxing Challenge for Pinoys

Filipinos are widely known in the world as the home of great boxers of the generation such as Manny "Pacman" Pacquiao and Juanito Donaire, who showed their incomparable skills in the No. 1 fighting sport. On the other hand, we also excel in the No. 1 thinking sport, chess with the great minds of our very own Grandmaster Eugene Torre and Wesley So. These different sports made us world class, then why don't we try the combination of it? Can we survive if Chessboxing is the new challenge of the world to the Pinoys?

Chessboxing is an incredible sport, for it is a combination of the No. 1 thinking sport and the No. 1 fighting sport. It highly requires the players to have a high staying power both physically and mentally.
Curious about the mechanics of the game? In a chessboxing fight, players play alternating rounds of chess and boxing. The fight begins with a chess round then followed by a round of boxing followed again by a chess round and so on.

The fight consists of six rounds of chess and five rounds of boxing with the total of eleven rounds. They have four minutes time in each round of chess which it takes three minutes each boxing round. The two opponents have twelve minutes of their chess timers. there is a one minute break each rounds allotted for fighters to change their gears.

The battle ends if the opponent surrendered either in chess or boxing rounds, checkmate or exceeded the time limit on chess rounds, and knocked-out or referees decision in the boxing rounds. If the chess game ends in a stalemate, the opponent with the higher score in boxing wins. If there is an equal score in boxing, the opponent with black pieces win just like the standard rule in chess.

This chessboxing sport has been scattered all over the world by the World Chessboxing Organization (WCBO) that pledge to train people in a battle of fists and brains. They are currently in the process of thinking new training methods with the help of some experts from both sport worlds such as scientist and neurologist. The people behind the new sport believed that this sport will help us to retrieve our goal to have a healthy mind and body.

Chessboxing seems to be a big challenge for Filipinos if they will only discover this sport. They already proved their great abilities in different sports particularly in boxing and ches. Maybe its time to try some new sport like chessboxing to justify the extraordinary talents they have in the world of sports.







By: Christeen Gae D. Padilla