Wide world of chessboxing

Okay folks, I am now officially proclaiming that we have gone too far. The sports industry, and sports are an industry rather than a diversion (they have been for a long time and I for one will argue that that is not good), is out of control to the point of having become a joke upon itself.

Things such as frisbee and cornhole now get airtime on ESPN. Really? These are games which are fit for little more than recreation at family reunions. I won't even get into competitive eating...all right, I have, and will further. It's an affront to all things good in the world and an insult to poor and hungry. Quite bluntly, it mocks them. Now added to all this inanity is the up and coming 'sport' of chess boxing, or chessboxing.

I had to look it up; it just seemed too thoroughly oddball to be true. Even though I caught a few minutes of it on ESPN2 yesterday, I wondered if perhaps it was a joke. Perhaps ESPN and the Onion had formed a faux sports entertainment business. Yet apparently it's, uh, well, I hesitate to say legit. But apparently it is popular in some parts of Europe.

You box a round, then play a game of chess. Then you box again, then play chess again. Somehow results are correlated and one or the other, I guess athlete, wins. Honest. You can win instantly by knockout or checkmate, by the way. Describing that as strange undercuts the definition of strange, methinks.

I believe that prizefight boxing is immoral anyway (as the direct intent is to actually hurt a fellow human being rather than prevent him from obtaining a goal of some sort) but still; chess boxing? It's the world turned upside down. It does not speak well of our human capacity for decadence. I ask seriously: why do we need such bizarre entertainment?