Checkmate or knock-out: chess boxing lands as a punch Alternating chess and boxing, sweaty athletes compete in a ring on a Friday evening in Berlin, under the eyes of the two creators of chessboxing: the French comics author Enki Bilal, who in his album Froid équateur (1992) imagined a boxing match on a chess board, and Dutch artist Iepe Rubingh, who put it into practice in 2002 in a bar in Amsterdam.