When we first heard about chess boxing, we thought it was a joke. Chess boxing? Could it really be a thing? Turns out, it is, and it's just what it sounds like: alternate rounds of chess and boxing. You can win by knockout or checkmate – whichever comes first. Don't laugh – this odd couple made it to the Paris Olympics as an exhibition match. Russia is the reigning champ. But this year an upstart American team swung for the medals. Still think we're kidding? Come with us to the World Chessboxing Championships in Serbia.
It's a quiet September Sunday in Loznica, a sleepy Balkan town in western Serbia. But inside the local sports arena, the bells are ringing for a different reason.
The German comes out fast, jabbing and punching. He batters his Russian rival until a roundhouse sends him down. Fighters from 18 countries are here trying to knock each other's heads off. There's the bell. But wait, now the fighters strip off their gloves and sit down – it's chess time. Competitors have three minutes to vanquish their enemy on the board. If they don't, it's back to the slugfest for three more minutes. It's gloves on, gloves off – until checkmate, knockout or judge's decision.
This is chess boxing, where knuckle meets nerd.
Bill Whitaker: When you first heard about it, did you know that it was a real sport?
Matt Thomas: No, I thought it was, like a "Saturday Night Live" skit. It was so absurd to me that someone would combine these two things.
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Bill Whitaker: I have to admit when I first heard about it, I laughed. It sounds crazy.
Matt Thomas: It's the best thing about the sport. Chess is battle on a- on a board. And boxing is chess with my body. So when someone combined those two I was like, "Yes, here's my yin and yang. Here's what I was made for."
Matt Thomas: Ladies and gentleman, chess boxing fans around the world thank you for being here
Matt Thomas is a chess boxing evangelist and coach of Team USA. He's built a squad of 15 American contenders from all walks of life: there's the lawyer, a Cornell math major, a military veteran. In 2018, Thomas became the first American to compete for a world chess boxing title.
Bill Whitaker: And you won.
Matt Thomas: And I won. Which the person who was the most surprised about that was me.
Bill Whitaker: So did you win by hook or by rook?
Matt Thomas: Good question. It was actually by rook, yeah.
Thomas dropped out of law school and went all in. He's a promoter, commentator and fundraiser for a sport hardly anyone has heard of. No wonder. Chess boxing started out life in a French graphic novel. It was pure fiction until 2003 when it turned into fact at a real-life match in Berlin. It was an instant hit, especially in Russia. Now America is catching up, one fighter at a time.
William Graif: I had the body of a chess player. I was just like a scrawny kid, you know.
Meet William "Gambit Man" Graif, a New York State chess champ. He's been playing competitive chess since the age of five. We saw his take-no-prisoners approach when he demolished four of us at once – just for fun
Bill Whitaker: "How'd I get into this horrible position?"
Bill Whitaker: "Checkmate"
William Graif: "Checkmate"
Graif told us he added 30 pounds of muscle to become a chess boxer. He's still only 160 pounds.
Bill Whitaker: Are you scared in any way?
William Graif: I would be a little crazy not to be terrified.
William "Gambit Man" Graif and Bill Whitaker play chess
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Bill Whitaker: But why are you willingly deciding to step into a ring where you can get your head beaten in?
William Graif: Yeah, you sound like my mother. One of the things is sorta the opportunity to tell my story here, of, like, a kid who played chess growing up throughout school and was to an extent ridiculed and ostracized.
Bill Whitaker: For being a scrawny chess player?
William Graif: Exactly. Ok, you know I've been doing chess for a very long time. What better time to sort of try something new and challenge myself?
Like his teammates, Graif paid his own way to get here. There's no prize money in chess boxing – just the warmth of your country's flag. Matt Thomas told us that was enough to unite his ragtag team against the 800-pound gorilla: Russia.
Matt Thomas: We're by far the underdogs. We're coming in with the red, white and blue, trying to upset people. You know, no one thinks we're gonna do well. No one thinks we're gonna win.
Bill Whitaker: The Russians are the best
Matt Thomas: By a long shot, yeah so-
Bill Whitaker: But why? What makes them so good?
Matt Thomas: They have it in over 500 schools and universities –
Bill Whitaker: Really?
Matt Thomas: – where kids are growing up with chess boxing. It is their sport, their focus.
Matt Thomas: Making his chess boxing world championship debut, Wayne Clark:
Wayne "GodKing" Clark was about to run into that Russian machine. A former Harlem Globetrotter, Clark traded hoops for the ring 11 years ago. He's got the stare down perfected. His chess? A work in progress.
Wayne Clark
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We first met GodKing in Times Square, where he'd taken out a billboard to drum up interest in the sport. Clark told us he had one uncle who was a boxer and another who was a chessmaster.
Wayne Clark: And the next thing you know the chess board would roll out, and they would be playing chess till one and two o'clock in the morning. And I was just always around it. So when I heard of chess boxing I knew I was destined for it, yeah.
Bill Whitaker: So chess and boxing are part of your family's DNA?
Wayne Clark: Absolutely
Bill Whitaker: And have you seen this becoming more popular? More well known?
Wayne Clark: Yes, you know, we've actually are doing a chess boxing tour in schools right now. So we started this last year. And then the hope was that we can grow that all throughout the United States and introduce it to students, brains and brawn, and how they both work together.
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In Serbia, we watched on the big screen as Clark made his opening moves. The chess boxing crowd cheers as loudly for a captured queen as an uppercut. And they're not shy with advice.
Clark knew he had to win at boxing. But in the ring, his mojo deserted him. There was more wrestling than boxing. The Russian coach spurred his fighter on. Without a knockout, it was back to the board. Headsets on to block out coaching from the crowd. Clark tried valiantly to fend off the Russian attack. Too late. Checkmate.
Bill Whitaker: How you feeling right now?
Wayne Clark: I didn't do my game plan. I didn't stick to my game plan at all. I wasn't the Wayne Clark I know I am in boxing at all.
Bill Whitaker: Is this harder than you thought it would be?
Wayne Clark: The chess, yeah. The boxing was just stupid errors. I take fully accountability for that
Through 75 fights, Russia won victory after victory. But there were other contenders too. We saw knockdowns and knockouts. There was a little blood, a lot of sweat, but no tears. We saw fighters who flexed and grizzled veterans who tried. We saw nervous newbies and women fighters who pulled no punches.
Matt Thomas: Immediately a knockdown to start the fight by France
Then it was show-time for chess master William Graif. Coach Matt Thomas told us chess players may look meek, but they're cutthroats.
Matt Thomas
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Matt Thomas: Those guys are Mike Tyson, but in the head. They want to tear you apart and make you doubt yourself and want to quit. In the same way that a boxer would pick someone apart, they're picking you apart with their brain.
In his first match, Graif shredded his french opponent.
Matt Thomas: Checkmate on the board William Graif!
Now, he was facing a German champion.
Graif attacked, lightning-fast chess moves setting him up for the win. When they got to the ring, Graif channeled his inner Rocky and let loose with a flurry of punches. But it wasn't enough. He lost on points.
William Graif: I am really proud that I did this. I'm really proud of the way I went out. I'd do it all over again.
As Iron Mike Tyson once said – everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.
Matt Thomas: Most people on the surface when they hear about chess boxing they think that the battleground is the chess board or the boxing ring. And it is. You have to be good at both. But the real battlefield is the minute in between rounds.
Thomas told us the best chess boxers learn how to control their breathing to switch from a high-octane fight to cold calculation.
Matt Thomas: So the more that you can down regulate, lower your heart rate, dump the adrenaline out of your system, and let your amygdala chill out for a round – the more of your potential chess strength you're gonna be using in the chess round.
Bill Whitaker: So this transition- this is key?
Matt Thomas: Key. It's still to this day a competitive advantage that I think Team USA has over the rest of the world. Not as many people are putting as much time, effort and preparation into the minute in between rounds.
Halfway through the tournament, the scrappy underdogs of Team USA had two gold medals.
But the Russian march to first place continued.
Peter Zhukov: We are this great rival for everybody.
Peter Zhukov
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Peter Zhukov is a Russian businessman and the founder of the Russian Chess Boxing Federation. He told us chess and boxing are hard-wired into Russia's history.
Peter Zhukov: In Soviet old school Russian boxing gyms they would play chess after boxing training. They would just do it to develop certain qualities in their fighters. They played chess and checkers.
Bill Whitaker: To work a different part of your mind?
Peter Zhukov: Yeah
Zhukov was ringside for the last and most coveted title of the championships: the super heavyweight final. no surprise to see a Russian fighter here. His challenger?
Matt Thomas: Hailing from the United States of America, James Canty III
Michigan's James Canty was the last American standing. A professional chess player, Canty has been boxing for only two years. He was up against a brawler with years in the ring. Canty knew the Russian would be looking for his head. The Russian charged, lashing out with a punishing right hook. Canty danced and dodged, taking blow after blow.
But he hung on.
And on.
And then in the third round of chess – checkmate. James Canty III had beaten the odds to become the new super heavyweight chess boxing champion of the world.
He needed a chair.
James Canty III
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Bill Whitaker: It's like when you went back in for that second round –
James Canty: Yeah
Bill Whitaker: It's like the longest three minutes you ever went through
James Canty: Of my life, bro. Longest three minutes of my life. I ain't gonna lie.
Bill Whitaker: But you took a lickin' and kept on tickin'
James Canty: I did.
Bill Whitaker: You did
James Canty: I did and I'm a world champ
Bill Whitaker: And you're a world champ.
Coach Matt Thomas was giddy with excitement.
Matt Thomas: I couldn't be prouder
James Canty: Thank you
Matt Thomas: I mean to have a USA Russia final to close out the seventh chess boxing world championship and to beat Russia for a gold –
Matt Thomas: Let's go baby!
Russia blitzed the medals for first place, but Team USA took nine – enough for second, surprising everyone. Already hyped for next year's slugout, they were going home on a high.
Matt Thomas: I love a happy ending, don't you?
Produced by Heather Abbott. Associate producer, Paulina Smolinski. Broadcast associate, Mariah Johnson. Edited by Warren Lustig.
