Kings of the Ring

Ladies and gentlemen, please rise for Tim Woolgar, the UK’s first unofficial heavyweight champion...of Chessboxing.

Britain’s newest sport may not be the most respected citizen of the wide world of sports, but it doesn’t half put some strain on the head. Competitors are charged with the task of outfoxing each other on the chessboard for four minutes, before whipping the table away and aiming vicious jabs at each other for three minutes. This process goes on for eleven rounds, or until someone checkmates their opponent or stretches them out on the canvas.

It’s cerebral, cruel, challenging and crazy. Just crazy enough, in fact, to attract a capacity crowd to East London on a Friday night.

Chessboxing classes have been taking place under the radar in Islington for several months now. But its first official venture onto British soil came on August 15, when 150 curious souls slapped money down on the box office of a club just off Bethnal Green Road.

The venue’s owners excitedly reported demand for tickets had dwarfed the club’s recent Mexican wrestling showcase, and the booming PA system boasted it was the best-attended chess match since 2000.

All this is good news for Tim, a former TV producer who gave up his day job to promote the sport in the UK earlier this year. He spent much of the afternoon laying the groundwork for its UK debut, chipping in with everything from greeting guests to laying out ringside seats.

The North London chess enthusiast gave his first interview as The Champ after a nine-round brain-crusher against Exeter’s Stewart Telford, a former amateur boxer who now works with young offenders.

He said: “I’m the British heavyweight champion of chessboxing because there’s only been one UK title bout and I won it. I’m over the moon, and really chuffed about it. Now I’m going to take on the world.�

His chosen sport may not have the money, or much TV coverage beyond clips on Youtube. But it already has a suitably weird origin story. Chessboxing’s fabled William Webb Ellis is Dutch artist IEPE, who lifted the idea from Enki Bilal’s comic book Le Froid Eqateur as a form of artistic performance. The first ever match-up took place in Amsterdam’s Paradiso on November 14 2003, during which Iepe the Joker conquered Luis the Lawyer in the final round when Luis exceeded his chess time limit.

Tonight’s match could hardly be called performance art. If it was indeed art, it was the most violent thing to happen to something creative since a drunken Van Gogh sliced up one of his portraits for looking at him funny. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that your ultimate chessboxer is just some guy that can master sitting still during the chess rounds before getting the job done in the ring.

There are a surprising number of fighters on the circuit who picked up boxing well after they mastered chess, and they’ll tell you that most bouts end with a checkmate. Unless you’ve got the power of a Tyson or Holyfield – or possibly a steel bat – it’s tricky to smack someone into submission in the time it takes to boil an egg.

Spitalfields-based national chess master Rajko Vujatovic, who acted as referee in the chess rounds, said: “The majority of the time it ends up being decided by the chess element.

“However, when someone gets the upper hand on the chessboard, the other guy gets very aggressive in the next boxing round because he knows he has to go for a knockout. But if you’re getting punched and have all that adrenalin flowing, the situation is a little different to your average chess game.�

In fact, from wandering around the crowded, blood-red venue, you wondered if anyone was expecting that much punching at all.

Kristina Hokenberg came from the City to watch the show after reading about it in a magazine.
She said: “I’m more of a chess fan, to be honest. I actually don’t like boxing, so the fighting rounds are a bit of a struggle. I think the best chess player will probably win. I don’t think it’s possible to get a knockout at the moment. We’re probably not going to see a lot of actual boxing tonight.�

Tonight’s warm-up event saw the lithe German Sacha Wandkowsky facing off against the thicker-set Dutchman Hubert Van Melick. Both men opened up cautiously on the board before technical difficulties put paid to the TV screen beaming out the chess moves in round three. The ring action was a battle of contrasting styles, with Sacha bouncing on his toes before leaning in and Hubert holding his ground before thundering forward. But the crowd were running out of innuendoes, and getting used to not seeing many gut-wrenching punches.

Sacha’s aggressive two-pronged assault gave the crowd a victory to cheer in round seven, even though they didn’t see the chess move that sealed the win. But did the massed ranks really turn up for the skill, or just the spectacle?

Heiko Logisia, a German national who works in a small German bank in the city, was coaxed down after a friend loaded up some clips in the office.

He said: “We Googled it and saw a few videos on Youtube. I last played chess about three years ago and I’ve never boxed before, and I’d never seen a boxing bout live before. I wanted to see the venue as well because someone said it was cool.

“It’s a really unusual event. When I told people where I was going, they just looked surprised. I think it will spread through word of mouth, and there’ll be more people next time.�

The atmosphere warmed up significantly by the time the main event rolled around, and it wasn’t just due to the beakers of plastic beer on offer.

Thunderous and bemused cheers pulled both heavyweights from the dressing room. Exeter boy Stewart Telford emerged swamped in the huge black cowl of Star Wars’ villainous emperor, flanked by two wing-men in white vests. Tim Woolgar strode out alone, backed by Guns ‘n’ Roses.

Suddenly, the music stopped, the chess board came out, and the crowd had to remember to stay quiet for a little while. And that’s where the mesh between boxing and chess started to unravel.

A capacity crowd at a boxing match is sure to attract its share of baying, drunken fans. But a throbbing hive of noise such as Madison Square Gardens isn’t the ideal home of chess players, who generally need to hear themselves think before hurling their pieces across the board. As a result, the competitors on the night wore giant headphones to keep them in the zone while making moves in the ring.

So which soothing outfit gets the nod when it comes to calming the nerves and charging the brain? Is it Enya, Katie Melua, or even Dido?

Tim later said: “It’s choral music overlaid with the sound of crashing waves and seagulls. You have to be able to switch off from the crowd noise if you can.
“Some people were shouting out some really unpleasant stuff. You could hear everything and it really put me off, and then Stewart would suddenly hit me. There were one or two abusive voices out there, but then this is a boxing crowd.
“The hardest thing is keeping focused on the chess, because you get into the zone for boxing. I lost my thread for a while during the later rounds.�

Both men played strong but cautious hands on the chessboard in the early stages, and then pounced on each other in the ring. The thunderclaps of contact to the head almost drowned out the choruses of wincing from the crowd in the early stages, as Tim’s more agile ring movements were countered by Stewart’s sudden violent hooks. The Exeter man in the black and red trunks hurtled forward with a blow to Tim’s face as the match warmed up, leaving him with a blossoming shiner to consider as he sat back down in front of his black ranks.

Tim said: “He was coming at me out of the shadows. He hit me with a few punches, but they didn’t feel that hard.
“I need to stay out of range a little bit more in future. He hit me with a lot of punches which I shouldn’t have allowed him to connect with.�

The ultra-violence on offer warmed the crowd’s spirits for the chess rounds, which reached fever pitch in round seven as Tim moved onto the offensive and left Stewart needing a quick knockout in round eight to salvage a win. But Tim kept his footing for three tense minutes, sealing his title with a checkmate in round nine.

Stewart, 42, said: “My strategy was to play my chess slow and do my boxing fast. I think Tim was hoping to do the opposite. I was trying to draw him in and make him miss before countering.
“I thought that if I hit him just right he might go down, but he took some pretty clean, hard shots. He wobbled a few times, but didn’t give up.�

Stewart was taught chess by his father at the age of four, and upped his regular training to compete in the bout.

He said: “My friends all laugh at me. They think it’s crazy. They’re all asking when I’m going to sign up for Cluedo Judo or Buckaroo Tae Kwan Do.
“Doing the two together is pretty challenging. I think people have got to be realistic about themselves. I’ve boxed before and I train regularly so I’m comfortable in the ring. You have to realise it is real boxing, and you are going to get hit.�

Curiosity may have lured most of the crowd over to East London, but many will probably direct friends to the next bout in October, or at least to links on Youtube.

Dan Sandy of Battersea said: “It was fantastic. It’s such a strange juxtaposition. It’s captivating but lo-fi at the same time. One of my friends in Germany is a huge fan of this, so I had to check it out when it came to London. I really came for the spectacle.

“I’m not really a big chess fan. I wasn’t really following what anyone was doing with the chess. But if you want a good Friday night out, you can’t get better than this.�

All pics by Ben Broomfield