Opposites attract. It is for that reason, I guess, that kung fu movies became so very popular among black Americans. It is also for that reason, I guess, that the chess, which is the best hobby, got combined with the worst hobby: boxing.1 But the genesis of chess boxing is a little bit weirder than a simple inevitability. It started in the title of a 1979 movie: The mystery of chessboxing, but there it actually referred to Chinese chess or xiangqi. As far as I can tell, it only became an actual thing people do in 2008. Somewhere between those two dates, our subject for today saw the light of day.
The Wu-Tang Clan, a hip hop collective from the East of the USA that had gotten its name from a kung-fu film too, was inspired by the movie to write a song with the same title.2 It has absolutely nothing whatever to do with chess. But there’s chess in the title and there’s chess in the music video.
At the beginning of the music video, we can see two clan members at the chessboard. The view is clear enough to allow for a reliable reconstruction:3
It’s clear what happened here: the image got mirrored along the vertical. If we were to undo this mirroring, we would find a position that, while very far from a theoretical hotspot, has been played hundreds of thousands of times on lichess.
Unfortunately, we don’t find out how the game continues. Instead of focusing on the proceedings on the sixty-four squares, the clan is shown rapping and doing what I guess could optimistically be described as a dance. There are some tantalising shots in which we see them play some moves, but which ones is impossible to determine. And I guess that is the mystery of chessboxing.
Realism: 0/5 The position is illegal. I know the Wu-Tang clan is probably not at fault, but that hardly matters: the result is just as horrid.
Probable winner: It’s too early to say. White scores a tiny bit better in the lichess database, but the difference is negligible. In essence, it’s just the best player that’ll win — or the luckiest.
1. [I said what I said and I stand by it: boxing is the worst hobby. If you spend your spare time hitting people in the face I will side-eye you thoroughly.] ↩
2. [Modulo a massacre of the spelling, but it in nineties that was kewl.] ↩
3. [The mystery of the perfect diagram editor.] ↩