No response returned

When Matt Thomas dropped out of law school, he devoted himself to a sport he initially thought was a joke: .

In 2018, he became the first American to compete for a world chess boxing title. This year he led a team of 15 Americans to compete at the seventh World Chessboxing Championships in Loznica, Serbia. 

"Chess is battle on a board. And boxing is chess with my body," Thomas said. "So when someone combined those two I was like, 'Yes, here's my yin and yang. Here's what I was made for.'"

Chess boxing started as fiction in a French graphic novel, until in 2003 there was a real life match fought in Berlin. The sport's popularity grew across Europe, especially in Russia. The odd competition even made it to the Paris Olympics as an exhibition match in summer 2024.

Fighters don their gloves and duke it out in the ring for three minutes. When the bell rings, they strip off their gloves and turn to the chess board, shifting from brawn to brain. The match continues — ring, board, ring, board — until there's a checkmate, knockout or a judge's decision. 

"It was so absurd to me that someone would combine these two things," Thomas said he thought when he first heard of the sport. 

"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 the rounds," Thomas said. 

The best chess boxers learn how to control their breathing to switch from a high-octane fight to cold calculation, Thomas said. 

"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 going to be using in the chess round," Thomas said. 

Thomas' team of American chess boxing contenders at the World Chessboxing Championships this September in Loznica, Serbia, came from all walks of life. There was a lawyer, a Cornell math major, a military veteran and a former Harlem Globetrotter. 

William "Gambit Man" Graif has been playing chess since the age of 5 and is a New York State chess champ. 

"I had the body of a chess player," he said. "I was just like a scrawny kid."

Graif added 30 pounds of muscle to become a chess boxer. He's still only 160 pounds. 

"I would be a little crazy not to be terrified," Graif said. 

Graif said he wanted to tell his story of being a kid ridiculed for playing chess going on to challenge himself with something new. 

Thomas said the chess masters may look meek, but they're cutthroats. 

"Those guys are Mike Tyson, but in the head," he said. "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."

Also on the team was Wayne "GodKing" Clark, a former Harlem Globetrotter. He traded hoops for the ring 11 years ago and is still working on his chess skill. Clark, who took out a billboard in Times Square recently to drum up interest in chess boxing, said he has one uncle who was a boxer and another who was a chessmaster. 

"So when I heard of chess boxing I knew I was destined for it," he said. 

Clark said he and his fellow Americans have taken chess boxing on a tour through U.S. schools to drum up interest.

"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," he said. 

Clark and Graif paid their own way to the championship in Serbia. There's no prize money in chess boxing — just the warmth of your country's flag. Thomas said it was enough to unite his ragtag team against the biggest competition: Russia. 

"We're by far the underdogs. We're coming in with the red, white and blue, trying to upset people," Thomas said. "No one thinks we're going to do well. No one thinks we're going to win.

Fighters from 18 countries were at the September championship. Russia was the favorite, as chess boxing is a sport at over 500 schools and universities there, Thomas said.

Through 75 fights, Russia won victory after victory. When Graif was up representing the U.S., he shredded his French opponent in his first match. He went on to face a German champ, but he lost on points.

Halfway through the tournament, the scrappy underdogs of Team USA had two gold medals, but the Russian march to first place continued.

Russia is too big to beat, according to Peter Zhukov, a Russian businessman and the founder of the Russian Chess Boxing Federation. 

"We are this great rival for everybody," Zhukov said. 

Chess and boxing are both hardwired into Russia's history, he said.

"In Soviet old school Russian boxing gyms, they would play chess after boxing training," Zhukov said. "They would just do it to develop certain qualities in their fighters. They played chess and checkers."

Zhukov was ringside for the last and most coveted title of the championships: the super heavyweight final, where a Russian fighter took on James Canty III, a professional chess player from Michigan. 

Canty has only been boxing for two years, and the Russian he was up against was a brawler with years in the ring. Canty knew the Russian would be looking for his head. He danced and dodged in the ring, taking blow after blow but managed to hang on . 

And then, in the third round of chess, checkmate: Canty had beaten the odds to become the new super heavyweight chess boxing champion of the world. 

"Longest three minutes of my life. I ain't gonna lie," he said of his time in the ring. 

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.

"I love a happy ending," Thomas said. "Don't you?"