It is Saturday, July 28, 2012. At 8:30 pm, Schaltzeit streams into the completely sold-out Platoon Kunsthalle in Prenzlauer Berg along with a good 300 other guests to see, hear, and live the 4th Berlin Chess Boxing Championships.
The crowd is pressing in. The program opens with a short reading by Berlin author Helmut Kuhn from his novel “Gehwegschäden.” It is about chess boxing, but his words barely carry past the second row. The murmuring crowd is only called to order by the thundering voice of the professional ring announcer and chess commentator. His drawn-out vowels and piercing looks make it clear: chess boxing may take brains, but it is still a genuine combat sport. Nobody here is trying to assemble the “gentlemen among boxers.”
And so the first fighters step into the ring: fog, cheers, flashes, music, and again and again that booming voice. The opponents punch the air to intimidate each other and bounce up and down. The ring girl parts the ropes, the music falls silent … and the opponents sit down at the board.
The first bout is a grind, and lopsided. A chess grandmaster faces a newcomer who, despite a much larger time allowance, eventually loses on the clock in round 11. In between, however, the referee had already given both of them a standing count, utterly exhausted.
The second bout was in fact decided by a knockout in the first boxing round. Tilman Kohls first bloodied his opponent’s nose, and with another hit sent him to the canvas, briefly disoriented, so the ringside doctor stopped the fight. Kohls is now the new Berlin chess boxing champion in the light heavyweight division, and even the last spectator realized that there was real boxing going on here.
Before the third and final bout, “Transformer di Roboter” cranked things up with electronic music and psychedelic visuals in the background. Like a berserker, the musician leapt from corner to corner, singing, completely immersed in his music and performance, and gave the evening yet another special touch.
The main event, the German light heavyweight championship, ended just as abruptly as the second bout: in the first boxing round, Tim Bendfeldt took a hit to the larynx from Nils Becker and had to concede early.
That concluded the official program of the evening, although by now André Winzer had drunk enough courage to challenge Iepe Rubingh, founder and chairman of the Chess Boxing Club Berlin, to a game of blitz chess in the ring. Whether it was his hopeless position on the board or the prospect of hitting the canvas himself in the boxing round that would inevitably follow – after a few minutes, André in any case took to his heels.
The mood in the Schaltzeit fan section was excellent, and the evening was a complete success. Schaltzeit is keeping its fingers crossed for the young sport as it pursues its goal: the 2020 Olympics.
AB
