New sport combines boxing and chess

Nikolay Sazhin almost knocked out his opponent with a blow to the chin in the second round. But he had to take the queen to win the match.

In front of 1,000 cheering fans one recent Saturday night, Sazhin moved his bishop to go in for the kill and won the world championship of chess boxing, a weird hybrid sport that combines as many as five rounds of pugilism with a game of chess.

The combatants switch back and forth between boxing and chess -- repeatedly putting their gloves on and taking them off, so that they can move the pieces around the board without clumsily knocking them over -- in a sort of brains-and-brawn biathlon.

"It's the No. 1 thinking game and the No. 1 fighting game," said Iepe Rubingh, the sport's 32-year-old founder. - abc