Chess boxers slug it out

I’m not usually interested in sports, but this sounds fantastic: chess boxing.

Berlin is home to the world’s biggest chess boxing club with some 40
members and it is in an old freight station here that the two men
settled the matter early yesterday.

The match began over a chess board set up on a low table in the middle of a boxing ring.

Stripped to the waist, wearing towels around their shoulders and
headphones playing the lulling sound of a moving train to drown out the
baying crowd, the men played for four minutes.

Then off came their reading glasses and on went the gloves and the mouthguards.

For three minutes they beat each other and then, when the bell went,
the chess board was back in the ring and they picked up the gentlemanly
game where they had left off.