Chess boxers fight to win by hook or by rook

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

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.'"

What is chess boxing?

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 s