European Heavyweight Championship Eliminator
‘THE ROCK’ DEFEATS ‘THE PHOENIX’
ChessBoxing tournament, 15 May 2010, London’s Boston DomeIn a mouthwatering heavyweight contest promoted by the Great Britain ChessBoxing Organisation, Andy ‘The Rock’ Costello defeated Sergio ‘The Phoenix’ Leveque by tech-nical KO in round 8. After a controversial decision to halt the fight, Costello earned the right to challenge Gianluca ‘Il Dottore’ Sirci for the European Heavyweight crown.
Exeter-based Costello is a world class cage-fighter, and was a junior chess champion before giving up the game at the age of 12 to dedicate himself to martial arts. The Italian Leveque is an experienced boxer and has reached the rarefied heights of chess master. Leveque has a 100% chessboxing record – if he doesn’t win by KO, he’s adept at ham-mering through the king’s defences instead.
‘The Rock’ has a terrifying style of boxing where he gets close in, and pummels away to wear his opponent down. Leveque, much the stronger chess player, could afford the luxury of playing quickly to reduce the number of boxing rounds. Costello’s strategy was conversely to make the chess last as long as possible, so he could get as many boxing rounds to increase the chances of a KO. He would not want to quickly get checkmated. Even if he got an inferior position, he’d want to use his full 12 minutes.
After the initial 2 rounds, it was clear the contest was a tense race between whether Leve-que could checkmate Costello before Costello could KO Leveque. After a quiet opening where Costello had the advantage of the White pieces, Leveque launched an audacious attack against Costello’s king. At first the Englishman retaliated with a combination that won a pawn. However, the Italian chess master showed his class by methodically im-proving his piece placements to threaten checkmate. Costello coolly defended a difficult position to cling on for 4 chess rounds. However, he needed a KO in boxing round 8, as he only had 40 seconds remaining in the chess with a worse position, and would there-fore certainly lose in chess round 9.
Having achieved a knockdown in round 2, the immensely fit Costello went for one last push against the drained Italian. The Englishman hurtled himself towards Leveque with his trademark 'arms-a-swinging' attack. Leveque fell to the ground for an 8-count. He got up, held on for dear life before being floored again. With 50 seconds remaining, referee Dominguez stopped the contest. This was a controversial decision since Leveque was adamant that at least one of his knock-downs was a low blow, and he could continue until the end of the round. However, the referee judged it was unsafe. Victory to Cos-tello by TKO in round 8!
In the undercard, Germany reinforced itself as a chessboxing powerhouse when Anatol Przytulski defeated Matt ‘Crazy Arms’ Read by technical KO in round 4. Przytulski had a fluid boxing style and he caught Read out with a powerful right-hook when his guard was down. Although the chess game was unfinished with just 20 moves played, they were high-class moves where neither player made a mistake.
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