FSOM: Welcome to chess boxing (yes, it is a thing) – and here are my own ideas for hybrid sports which would take the world by storm!

It’s amazing the stuff which can be learned from watching TV quiz shows.

Not so much from the questions asked, ranging from the line-up of S Club 7 to Vasco da Gama’s voyages of discovery, but of the contestants themselves.

So it was while FSOM was watching a tea-time quiz, where one contestant was about to go into the firing line.

To put him at ease, the host asked him what his hobbies were.

‘Chess boxing’ was his reply, causing FSOM to snort like a Gloucester Old Spot pig and cough his chocolate Hobnob (other biscuits are available) halfway across the room, splattering the TV with crumbs.

The bizarre thoughts that swirled through FSOM’s fertile brain as to what chess-boxing could be were only partially allayed by a quick conversation with Senor Google.

It turns out that chess boxing is, indeed, a thing. It has not just one governing body, but two; the World Chess Boxing Association and the World Chess Boxing Organisation.

Chess boxing is exactly what you think it is, if you have a perverted mind, with contestants taking part in alternate rounds of boxing and chess, with the winner decided by a knockout (in the ring) or checkmate (on the board).

Chess boxing is the b*****d child of ’round-the-house chess’ invented by no less a person than Alan Turing, the genius mathematician of the Enigma code-cracking Ultra team. This entailed one player making a chess move and running around the house, in which time his opponent had to execute  a move. Cracking the Enigma code was reckoned to have shortened WWII by two years but who knows how much shorter it might have been had the Ultra team not spent their time haring round the huts in Bletchley Park.

The fact that chess boxing was invented by a French comic book artist named Enki Bilal tells you he might have done so for larks and that its adaptation by a Dutch performance artist called Iepe Rubingh, primarily as an art performance, hints at the complete s***s and giggles intentions.

Nevertheless, devotees of the concept took it up and turned it into a serious sport, with the word ‘serious’ doing a lot of heavy lifting.

The rules are simple enough. Contestants face each other across a chess board ringside, and squeeze in as many moves as possible in three minutes before jumping into the ring and bashing seven sacks out of each other for three minutes, before the bell sounds and they stagger back to the board – providing they can see past the little birds circling their heads – for another three minutes of cerebral combat over the pieces.

Contests can last 11 rounds, at which point a verdict is announced, or shorter than that if a knockout occurs in the ring, or a contestant is checkmated, on account of his battered brain picking up his king to bite the head off thinking it was a chocolate bar.

FSOM is not certain whether the main purpose of chess boxing is to show that boxers have brains, or that chess-playing poindexters who on appearance could not punch their way through a wet lettuce leaf, can tear up the note from their mum and take it to the man.

It’s hard to picture Tyson Fury knitting his brows to mount a pawn sacrifice attack, although Lennox Lewis would confirm a Sicilian defence is as good at keeping the opposition at bay as a straight left jab.

Current world chess champion Gokesh Dommaraju doesn’t have the appearance of an assassin in the ring, although past champion, Russian Boris Spassky looks like he could have mixed it up if needed.

Not anybody can climb into the ring. Contestants must have taken part in at least 50 amateur bouts, and have a rating on the Elo system (nothing to do with liking Mr Blue Sky and other Jeff Lynne hits) of 1,500.

There’s nothing new under the sun and hybrid sports have always been around, especially in the Olympic Games. Biathlon as a winter sport combining cross-country skiing and shooting, started out as a means of catching dinner in the arctic circle before it became a training module for Russian Spetsnaz special forces.

Modern pentathlon was based on the skills – swimming, horse riding, fencing, shooting, running – a king’s messenger would traditionally have needed to get a message through enemy lines. The modern equivalent would require a king’s flunky to be proficient in PR damage limitation, running the king’s bath at just the right temperature, setting out his majesty’s clothes, ensuring his pens work correctly and avoiding awkward meetings with sons.

Sitting proudly alongside chess boxing are the likes of footgolf. Another hybrid sport which sounds exactly as it appears on the tin, footgolf is a cross between football and golf. Invented by and taken up by golf clubs facing closure in the face of the collapse of the numbers taking up traditional golf, footgolf does away with the need to shell out for an expensive set of Callaway clubs costing north of four-figures, replaced by a pair of Nike football boots as players kick a football around the course, ending up on a green where the hole has been enlarged enough to sink a football. 

Although increasing in popularity it might be some time before a herd of Aberdeen Angus cows is seen heading homewards and footgolf is played on the Old Course at St Andrew’s.

Hybrid Martial Arts is a hybrid sport described as a full contact individual combat sport which allows the use of a wide range of all aspects and techniques. This lively sport is seen on pavements outside any pub or club at closing time at weekends.

Joggling sounds like the sort of activity played out in 1970s comedies, involving slow-motion shots of well-endowed young ladies in tight T-shirts which would have no place today, but is in fact a hybrid sport involving jogging and juggling (of course, for those pervs with sewers for brains!). Interest in this sport would be increased by the use of sharp or flaming torches.

As expected, FSOM has one or two of his own ideas for hybrid sports which would take the world by storm.

Swimming-singing would be a huge draw, who wouldn’t cough up shekels to see this combo where competitors belt out a song after a couple of lengths?

Classification would be by stroke – breast, back, butterfly and freestyle – and musical genre; soul, light operatic, rap and glam rock for the older competitor.

While most hybrid sports lend themselves to individuals, FSOM hasn’t neglected teams.

Football-firefighting. Take your seats for this spectacular where teams play a 45-minute half of football and on the half-time siren, rush off to put out a fire.

In the short, seven-a-side version, the fire could be a burning shed, with the teams using a garden hose to extinguish the flames, with extra points awarded for salvaging the rake, shovel, lawn mower and other garden tools.

The full 11-a-side version will see teams given use of a full-scale fire engine to tackle a house blaze. Teams will be expected to connect up to fire hydrants for their water supply and again, extra points will be awarded for ushering human occupants out of the house, with big bonus points on offer for rescuing pets (opening window to let parakeets/budgies/parrots fly out will not attract extra points).

Rugby Rescue combines the tough, combative sport of rugby with rescue operations. It falls into two categories. Rugby League Rescue and Rugby Union Rescue.

Rugby League being a northern sport, after 40 minutes of on-field action teams will be required to rescue stranded potholers, or shin up factory chimneys to rescue mill workers.

In the rugby union version, teams made up of almost exclusively private school chaps, will have to evacuate brokers from city office suites or clear the occupants of Knightsbridge apartment blocks or mount search and rescue missions for Oxfordshire farmers lost in their sunflower fields.

It promises to be gripping stuff and FSOM has got his choccy hobnobs at the ready when the first contestant on a tea-time TV quiz reveals his hybrid sport hobby to the world.

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