This week we’d like to highlight David Bitton‘s CHESSBOXING: The King’s Discipline. Though it almost seems like this is just too crazy to be real, chessboxing is an actual thing, and this documentary aims to shed some light on this quickly growing hybrid sport. Who wouldn’t want to watch people stimulate their brains with chess while pounding each other in the face? Click here to donate to the Kickstarter campaign, hit the break for more information, and be sure to tune in to the podcast on Monday when we speak with the film’s director.
Chessboxing: The King’s Discipline will tell the story of this man’s struggle to transform his sport from underground cult curiosity into a respected and recognized mainstream phenomenon.
“chessboxing is an actual thing”
Well, it isn’t really. It’s basically a joke: bad chess combined with even worse boxing. It has no professional competitors, it has no governing body, it’s not a sport, it’s not recognised by anybody as a sport and it never will be. It’s basically a very small-scale circus kept going by the curiosity of not-very-well-informed journalists, who will repeat nonsense like “one day it might be in the Olympics” and any number of fibs that the promoters like to tell. Nobody takes it seriously who doesn’t have a financial stake in pretending that it’s serious: this, I’m afraid, includes our filmmaker.
Welcome to noted chess blogger and passionate chessboxing critic Justin Horton, whose opinions will be very well represented in the documentary! You can even see him in the trailer video on the campaign page, clearly expressing his views on chessboxing.