Episode 892 - Matt “Matador” Thomas
In today's episode Jeremy sits down and talks with Matt Thomas, the 2018 World Chess Boxing champion from Atlanta.Matt “Matador” Thomas - Episode 892
SUMMARY
Matt Thomas shares his journey in the unique sport of chess boxing. He discusses how he discovered chess boxing and the training camp he went through to prepare for the World Championship. Matt explains the different styles and strategies in chess boxing and how the sport combines the mental and physical aspects of chess and boxing. He also talks about his role in promoting and growing the sport of chess boxing. Matt shares his journey in the world of chess boxing, from losing in the World Championship to becoming a commentator and promoter. He discusses the impact of the founder of chess boxing, Ipe, and his role in growing the sport. Matt also highlights the breakthrough event in 2019 and the future of chess boxing, including the involvement of influencers and the potential for scaling the sport. He encourages listeners to get involved and support chess boxing, whether as competitors or fans. Matt also discusses the concept of surrender and acceptance and the importance of starting something new and pursuing goals.
TAKEAWAYS
Chess boxing is a unique sport that combines the mental game of chess with the physicality of boxing.
Training for chess boxing requires managing state changes and resources effectively.
Chess boxing attracts individuals with a background in martial arts and chess, but also welcomes newcomers to both disciplines.
The sport of chess boxing offers a variety of styles and strategies, allowing individuals to express themselves in different ways. Chess boxing offers a unique combination of physical and mental challenges, making it an exciting and engaging sport.
The involvement of influencers and the promotion of chess boxing events can help grow the sport and attract a wider audience.
Surrender and acceptance are important concepts in chess boxing and in life, allowing individuals to find their true roles and contribute to the community.
Starting something new and pursuing goals, even later in life, can bring a sense of fulfillment and excitement.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction and Background
03:15 Discovering Chess Boxing
11:42 Experience in Calcutta, India
15:49 Training Camp for Chess Boxing
32:02 Different Styles in Chess Boxing
37:05 Endings in Chess Boxing
42:03 Role in Chess Boxing
46:43 Conquering vs. Defending
47:31 Losing in the World Championship and the Role of Chess Boxing Commentator
48:30 The Last Words of the Founder and the USA Today Feature
49:19 Choosing a Role in the Chess Boxing Community
50:46 The Breakthrough Event in 2019
56:18 The Inflection Point and the Future of Chess Boxing
01:03:14 The Concept of Surrender and Acceptance
01:04:10 The Massive Event in 2022 and the Acceptance of Chess Boxing
01:05:08 The Call to Action and Building Team USA
01:11:26 How to Get Involved and Support Chess Boxing
01:12:34 Starting Something New and Pursuing Goals
Show Notes
Connect with Matt Thomas on all platforms: @movingwithmat
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Show Transcript
Jeremy (00:00.71)
What's happening everybody? Welcome, it's another episode of Whistlekick, Marshall Arts Radio. And in just a moment, we're gonna be joined with my guest, Matt Thomas. Matt, thanks for being here. To those of you out there doing your thing, thanks for being here. Thanks for spending some time with us. We're gonna have a lot of fun today. And if you're new to the show, please make sure you visit whistlekick.com. Check out everything that we're doing over there. And if you wanna go deeper on this or any other episode, it's whis The full compliment of show notes, transcripts, all that good stuff is over there.
Matt, thanks for being here, man.
Matt (00:33.21)
I'm stoked to be here. I'm glad that we could get in touch via our mutual friend Sensei Seth.
Jeremy (00:36.944)
Yeah.
That's a great guy. And I already like you because you're wearing cans and very rarely do the guests have cans on it. That's a sign that you spend some time recording some audio.
Matt (00:53.95)
You know, I, it came along with the live streaming life. So, uh, so, yeah, I like the wireless. I could roam around my, my apartment and still have some sort of connection to the computer. I don't, I don't get tethered too far. So.
Jeremy (00:58.164)
does.
Jeremy (01:10.546)
I, these are my recording headphones. In fact, when I spent what might've been too much money on them, I promised myself that they would not stray from the computer. And once in a while, I will sit, I have several pairs of great headphones, but these ATs, these Audio Technicos, I will sit down periodically and listen to music with them. And it's just a different experience. There's nothing like a good pair of reference headphones.
Matt (01:35.39)
Yeah, I get it, man. And I have a friend who's an audiophile that has all the speakers, all the, you know, headphones that cost as much as a car. It's like, you know, listen to this, hear the difference. I'm like, it's a little better. Like, I get it. I don't know if it's like a Tesla better, but, you know.
Jeremy (01:54.856)
If you want...
If you want good music, you can spend like 50 to $100. If you want a tiny bit better than that, it's adding a zero. And it's, you know, for most things, it's not worth it. I mean, these weren't stupid expensive. These were like 150 bucks, but they've lasted. I mean, you can see if you look closely, I had to wrap the pad on the top with some gaffers tape, but yeah, they still sound great. Well,
Matt (02:19.938)
Hell yeah. There we go.
Jeremy (02:25.502)
I am nerdy in many ways and could actually enjoy a conversation on audio. And I mean, you threw in that Tesla comment, we could probably get into cars, but that is not what we are here for. We're here to talk about martial arts. And I don't know where you want to start. I know a little bit about you. I know you do something that here we are. We are coming up on episode 900. We have not had anybody that I'm aware of on this on this show that has.
that has done at least this one thing that I know about you. So I'm gonna... How about this? Here's the scenario. We're at a party and somebody in mutual knows us. They introduce us and they're like, "'Jeremy, you should meet Matt. He does martial arts." I'm like, "'Oh, Matt, you do martial arts?'
And that's where you jump in.
Matt (03:15.294)
can jump in right there. Yeah. So once for one, I'm very flattered. In so many words, you're calling me a one in 900 guests. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna hang that up on my wall. But what Jeremy is referring to is I am a chess boxer. And often I'm misheard in loud party environments. So the first time I said that to you might have been like, what boxing with your chest? Like now
No, the board game chess and the combat sport boxing combined is my passion, my sport. So have you...
Jeremy (03:53.81)
And I'm pleased to know it and this is right. So we're gonna get to a very nerdy Venn diagram intersection. And actually it's funny that my hands did that. Wu-Tang Clan did not invent it, invent that.
Matt (04:04.815)
It's true. They did have a song in the 90s called The Mystery of Chest Boxing. And so a lot of people in our community are Big Wu Tang Clan fans. And we use a lot of their music. They were actually in our official documentary. But they did not have a hand in creating the sport. It was actually born from a different style of art.
Jeremy (04:09.054)
Mr. E of ChessBock. That's right.
Matt (04:33.446)
artist named Enki Belial depicted his protagonist as a martial artist who would summon his opponents to a real life chessboard and then do battle with strength and strategy on that chessboard. And the founder of our sport was inspired by that comic book series and created a rule set for chess boxing in 2003. Uh, so that was 20 years ago and that was 15 years before I got involved with the sport.
Jeremy (05:01.382)
Okay. So there are collectively probably a dozen questions that I'm hearing in the back of my head and just, you know, imagining what the audience is saying. But here's, I think the one we've got to start with. How do you even find out about this as a thing? So you can say, I want to do this thing.
Matt (05:24.799)
Yeah, so my chest boxing origin story is a little wild. Yeah, so we need to back up a little bit. And then I'll tell you how I found chest boxing. So growing up, I was raised predominantly by a single mom. She worked, which meant after school, I needed to be doing things until she was done with work. And
Jeremy (05:28.57)
Your your issue one.
Matt (05:47.99)
those things that she got me into were martial arts and chess club. So martial arts really shaped my body, uh, how, how I move and chess shaped the way that I think. And I started with taekwondo. So a very kick heavy art. Um, but as I grew up, I got more interested in balancing out, uh, my, my repertoire. So in college, I started boxing. I joined the university of Georgia boxing team.
um and learned how to how to use my hands and all the while I played chess casually I start I stopped playing competitively as a as a teenager uh but I always kept it as kind of a hobby and something I would uh you know do while I was watching tv or do while I was in class or whatever and so uh fast forward into like mid-20s I was an amateur boxer
I got injured in a match to a degree where I needed to get shoulder surgery. I was laying in my recovery bed, getting chubby after the surgery. And I was watching a lot of martial art videos like Seth's and, you know, old boxing fights and that kind of thing. And I was playing all my chess because I had a lot of downtime and I could, I could kind of, you know, dust off the board. So, YouTube.
serves me a video, you know that like sidebar which says next up? I didn't even click on this video, it auto played. And it was a chess boxing video. So I'm like, I'm sitting there. I'm like, okay, I'm waiting for like Ash and Kutcher to pop out and say punks or
Jeremy (07:30.814)
Okay, so you did have the reaction I would expect I would have there's no way this is real
Matt (07:33.69)
Yeah, I thought it was made up. No, it was like an SNL skit. Like, you know, like who made this up? How does this exist? It doesn't seem real. And that's generally like, we're back in the party scenario and we're just meeting. That's generally the first reaction. It's incredulous curiosity. It's, you know, this can't possibly exist. Tell me more. And that's kind of how I felt, you know, watching this video. I was like, okay.
Jeremy (07:37.577)
Yeah, okay.
Matt (07:59.822)
Uh, you know, that was weird, but let me dig a little deeper here. So I found some articles. I found some other videos. I tracked down the contact information for our founder, Ipe Roombing. And I sent him an email and I was like, listen, I love what you created. I think it's awesome. I feel like I was born for it and I want to get involved. And so he reached back out and he's like, this is amazing. You're American. Uh, you know, we haven't had Americans really compete in the sport yet.
We'd love to plug you in." I was like, okay, well, you know, one quick thing, let me heal up my shoulder first and I'll reach back out. So that's what I did. Like a year and a half later, I reached back out and I was sparring again, I felt good. And he said, okay, well, let's get you plugged into the community.
Jeremy (08:45.33)
And what you said five years ago, so what did the community look like at that point?
Matt (08:51.262)
Yeah. So, um, I was recovering from surgery in 2016 and, uh, only one American had fought in, uh, in like, uh, a smaller promotion, not, not connected to the larger international scene. His name was David Depto. Um, so prior to me, he was the only person to compete internationally. He fought in London.
And there were a few other people in the United States, a guy named Jared in New York, and the head of LA Chess Boxing, and a few people were trying to get it up and running, but no one had gone to the World Championship yet. And so in 2018, when I was like, hey, plug me into this community, he was like, okay, you know, it's not much of a community. We're small, we're passionate, it's a niche. But.
the only event we have for the rest of the year is the world championship. And I was like, pump the brakes. Like I'm just coming off of surgery. I don't know if I'm ready to take all the best people in the world at this. Like, yeah, I want a warmup match, you know? Did I do something like that? And he said, well, you know, it's in Calcutta, India. It's a hike, but if you did it, you'd be the first American in history to compete in the world championship. You can help kick this off in a real way in your country.
Jeremy (09:54.484)
That feels like a big jump.
Matt (10:12.73)
And I think you should sleep on it. I think you should consider it. So that's what I did. I slept on it. I thought about it. And I think my ego got to me. I was like, you know, even if I fly over there and get my butt kicked, at least I'll be the first person from the States to do it. And how often in a lifetime, do you get to be the first person from your country to do something? How often do you get to represent your country competing?
Uh, you know, it's, it's pretty rare. So, so I leaned in, I, uh, you know, I basically made it my full-time job preparing for the world championship for eight weeks. I did an eight week fight camp. Uh, and that, that was, you know, morning, noon and night. If I wasn't working out, I was playing chess. If I wasn't playing chess, I was doing some form of diet and exercise. So it was, uh, it was all consuming and, uh, and honestly, one of the best periods of my life.
to f-
Jeremy (11:09.51)
I want to dig into what that camp looks like, because I think most of us know what it's like to study for a test, which is probably the closest thing I can imagine that a chess match would be. Most of us know what maybe preparing for a high rank martial arts testing or competition might look like. Very few of us have had to prepare for both of those at the same time. But before we go there, what was it like going to Calcutta?
Matt (11:16.281)
Mm-hmm.
Jeremy (11:37.022)
What was that experience? What was the match like? What was the community like?
Matt (11:42.085)
Dude, India is the closest you can get to visiting another planet on Earth. It is.
Jeremy (11:48.83)
I've heard people talk about that. Are you talking about the traffic and the chaos that is that or something else? Okay
Matt (11:54.218)
All the above, dude. You're walking around, there's cows walking down the sidewalk with you. There's... But, okay, it's different when it's a rural, it's different when it's a rural setting. It's a whole other thing. When there's 10 million people in a city and cows are battling for resources on the streets. But no, people driving there is insane. People don't pay attention to any kind of stoplights or anything.
Jeremy (11:59.314)
Well, I live in Vermont, so that's not that foreign. But, but, I hear you, I hear you.
Jeremy (12:13.839)
We don't have anywhere close to that. Yeah.
Matt (12:23.746)
Uh, everyone's run, running red lights. And the way that you drive is you have to keep your, your eyes fixed forward because anything could happen in front of you at any time. So peripherally all you basically develop like a sonar. So everyone's honking every few seconds and honking is how you know, like how close someone is or not. So it's like this, this like, you know, huge herd of, of dolphins.
Jeremy (12:29.035)
Mmm.
Matt (12:47.49)
just hopping around everywhere, streaming, so you know where it is. And going there, you're just in a constant state of high cortisol, high stress, because anything can happen at any time. There's all these sounds, all these smells, everything bombarding you. And I definitely prioritize and cherish my piece.
I like being in silence. I like, uh, you know, practicing in silence, all that kind of stuff. So when I arrived a week early to Calcutta for the world championship, it was like a hectic final weight cut, a hectic, like last few training sessions. Uh, you know, trying to figure out how much I could trust the food. All of that was, uh, was really intense.
Jeremy (13:31.894)
Wow, okay. That's awesome. It sounds like such a blast. There are lots of ways you can cut the population into two groups, but the one that I think is relevant here is people who like to do things that other people have not done. And I'm imagining that because the way you talked about it, you are of that ilk that you like to be earlier. First, you enjoy discovery, exploration.
Matt (13:48.47)
Yeah.
Jeremy (14:01.222)
Is that a fair assessment of you?
Matt (14:03.982)
Yes, although I think it's a symptom. So what I think the source of that symptom is, is wanting to live a good story. And I think that's something like at my core, when I've been either tested or like face my own mortality, what I've come back to is like, I don't know what happens after we die. I don't know what kind of rubric we're being graded on.
Uh, but if we're going to live this life, might as well live it to the best of our ability and, and make a hell of a story out of it. And, and this chest boxing chapter was meant to be that it was meant to be a life experience where I grew up doing both. Here's a way to bring that full circle and, and test myself on a world stage. And, and what I thought would be like a cool climax to like a side quest ended up
pretty much becoming the main quest where like a bunch of my identity is tied up in, you know, being a former world champion, chess boxer, being the voice of our sport internationally through commentary and interviews like this. And I think more and more of my career will be spent trying to grow the sport and attract more people to it.
Jeremy (15:03.624)
are.
Jeremy (15:23.23)
That's awesome. And I definitely want to talk about those roles that you're playing in now and what that looks like. But let's go back, as I said we would, and talk about this training camp. You said eight weeks, you were all in. I get the sense that, you know, maybe you weren't, because you said morning, noon, and night. So that either means a very forgiving job or no job. What did that eight week period look like? Take us through it.
Matt (15:49.794)
So in 2018, I was running a nonprofit and planning events year round. And the events would range from large tailgates with buffets, bands, you know, AV, to entrepreneurship summits, like conference style, speaker series. And then my main event model was something called Brawl for a Cause.
Brawler Calls is the name of my nonprofit, and it's a boxing event that features first time fighters fighting and fundraising for something that they personally believe in. So these are not people that grew up doing martial arts that have ever really even been in a fight. These are people like CEOs, celebrities, cops, firefighters, single mom, you name it. Anyone can sign up.
to fight in a fundraise for a charity of their own choosing. And in 2018, we had just finished our biggest event in our history. We had passed the seven figure raise marks. We had passed that million dollar mark. And my board, for the first time set a salary for me to keep building the nonprofit outside of our fundraising events.
And the meeting after they set my salary, I said, hey, I want a little time off to train for this chest boxing thing. But here's the caveat. I'm going to go through the same journey that our fighters go through to fight and to fundraise for something I believe in.
So I'm going to use, since I can't fight in my own events because there's a lot of operational work that goes into it. I MC those events. I can't do it in a brawl for a cause event. What I'm gonna do instead is I'm gonna treat this Chess Boxing World Championship like a brawl for a cause event. I'm gonna go through the fighter's journey, brawler's journey, where I haven't chess boxed before. I'm doing something scary. I'm getting knocked around and sparring. I'm having to call people to raise money, to fund my trip. And then on top of that, to send as many kids
Matt (18:03.446)
to chess camp and boxing camp as possible. And that was my goal. So spring 2018, we have the big event. May 2018, I announced, hey, I'm doing this world championship thing. And end of July was when the world championship was. So those eight weeks, I was able to live off of my brawl for a call salary. I was able to fundraise to send me
and a corner man and cameraman over to India in order to track the journey, get a lot of footage for this, you know, birth of USA chess boxing, and then use any kind of surplus to pump back into brawl for a cause to help further our mission of youth and leadership development, which chess and boxing falls under the umbrella of. But that's how it worked.
Jeremy (18:57.214)
Wow. Okay. And how about the mechanics of that training? Percentage spent boxing training versus chest training? Did it shift through those eight weeks?
Matt (19:11.166)
Yeah, definitely the majority was chest training. And just because you hit a wall with boxing, with fatigue and over training, before you hit that wall in chess. So, you know, first I'll talk about kind of like who I chose for training in each of these.
Jeremy (19:19.999)
Yeah.
Matt (19:34.542)
silos, each of these categories. And then we'll talk about how to weave them together. Because if you train chest boxing in silos, you're gonna have a big disadvantage over an opponent that trains them together. And we'll get into why, but it all comes back to this idea of state change management. Our body and our brain is constantly changing states throughout the day. You feel a lot different first thing in the morning when you wake up.
then after you've had your coffee, then after you've had a workout, then after you've eaten a big meal and you're digesting it. All of these different kind of ebbs and flows of the day are just a microcosm of a larger pattern that you can recognize within yourself and you can start to optimize and improve. And chest boxing is a really extreme lens to look at that state change management through. The part of your brain that you use when you fight,
Jeremy (20:13.589)
Yeah.
Matt (20:31.758)
is the part of your brain that you developed and, or that evolved first. So in caveman days is what kept us alive when there was a threat or when we needed to hunt. It's a very present state part of your brain. It's all the way in the back of your brain. And the part of your brain that you use when you play chess is what evolved last. So literally opposite sides. So your prefrontal cortex is your center for pattern recognition, strategic thought.
visualization, all the things that you need to use when you're thinking about action and reaction or when you're thinking about decision trees for if I choose this line in chess versus this response in chess. And is it, you know, it's the same part of your brain that you use when you business plan or when you're in a relationship and you're thinking about the future together. It's a very future focused part of your brain.
Jeremy (21:19.018)
Hmm, okay
Matt (21:21.286)
And I wish it was as easy as flipping a switch. And now I'm using the part of my brain that's perfect for whatever my next activity is, but it's not that easy. And, uh, the more that you train for that minute in between rounds and between chess and boxing, the better you get at shifting your, your body's bandwidth and your resources to, to shift to prime for whatever activity is coming next. So, uh, quick aside to say that I learned.
the hard way that I needed to start doing these things together. But when I started out, I was doing separate workouts. My chess coach is the head of chess Atlanta. He's an international master from Columbia named Carlos Perdomo. And he on day one invited me to one of his youth chess camps. This was, this camp was for eight to 12 year olds. Okay.
Jeremy (21:54.742)
Hmm.
Matt (22:15.838)
little kids and then me a 200 pounds six foot one man. So I went to this camp and the first thing he did is he sat me in the middle. Uh, and he had each kid rotate through and play me and he just wanted to assess where my chest level was. So he started with the 12 year olds and I started
Jeremy (22:40.541)
He's a little bit of foreshadowing there. Okay, keep going.
Matt (22:44.578)
I start playing the 12 year old and I start getting beat and not like barely beat. Like these kids are rinsing me and these are competitive chess players at, you know, very young age, but chess is not a game where age plays a huge factor. There are people on the grand stage that are in their teenage years that are playing against the world champion and giving them a run for his money.
And our current world champion became world champion when he was a teenager. So yeah, there were little kids and if we were chest boxing, man, I would have knocked them out, but, uh, it was just chess and I get all the way to the last kid at the camp and I, I won't, I'll never forget his face is this little eight year old, uh, who had, you know, some form of ADD or ADHD. He could not even focus.
on our game he was like watching the game next to us while he was beating me and after he checked me I was like okay all right so I'm gonna take five I went out to the parking lot I sat in my car and I looked in like my rear view mirror and I started crying
because I was like, I just signed up to fight in the world championship of chess boxing. I just told everyone in my life, my family, my friends, my whole like nonprofit community that I'm going to go represent the United States and I couldn't even beat an eight year old in chess.
Jeremy (24:16.823)
And if I may, just the way you talked about chess prior, you thought you were pretty good.
Matt (24:22.914)
Correct. Yeah. So like I, I was that little kid, right? Like I was going to the chess camps. I was playing in tournaments on the weekend, but I had spent so long away from the competitive scene in a time where chess progressed incredibly due to computers, due to AI. And chess was really one of the first things affected by AI in the nineties, Gary Kasparov, the world champion then played IBM's
Jeremy (24:52.81)
Deep blue.
Matt (24:52.982)
AI chess, yeah exactly, Deep Blue. So you know, I stopped playing early 2000s and then this whole new crop of chess players came up with a computer as their teacher. So I was good at a different kind of chess a long time ago and chess had changed a lot. So...
Now I was faced with this crossroads. You know, do I fake an injury? Do I come up with some kind of excuse of like, okay, I'm not actually gonna do this and fly over to India to go embarrass myself. Or am I just gonna see this as another challenge, another journey and try to get, you know, as much improvement in my chess game as possible in those eight weeks while getting into fight shape, which I had a little bit more recent experience with prior to my surgery. And so, you know,
obviously decided on the ladder. We've already talked about India and everything. So I kept going back to the kids' chess camps. I kept getting better. One thing that really helped was not trying to learn all of chess, every opening, every response that could possibly happen. And what I did is I just drilled a hundred miles deep on one opening and one response that played a really similar way. So as white and black, I can essentially play the same game.
that was very safe, it wasn't taking a lot of risks. And it would kind of like lead me or pigeonhole me into a longer chess game to maximize the amount of time that I would have in the ring and try to make, go ahead.
Jeremy (26:27.87)
So what I'm hearing, what I imagine just the way you would set this up was your game was, I'm going to not lose at chess, I'm going to win in the ring.
Matt (26:38.978)
Correct, or at least I'm gonna make the game go long in chess so that either I can maybe knock him out, knocking someone out is a really tough thing to do, but at least I can use my cardio to be less fatigue and make less mistakes on the board. So we're talking about, there you go. Exactly, so that's state change management. Your chess efficacy, when you walk into the match and the first round is on the board,
Jeremy (26:56.487)
Okay, there's the merger you're talking about, yeah.
Matt (27:08.858)
is like, let's say, let's say it's at 90%. After the first round, even if you don't get hit in the head, even if you don't get your bell rung and your little like, you know, headache or whatever, even if just your heart rate is up and you have adrenaline in your system, you could come down from 90 to like 50 to 60%, depending on how in shape you are and how good you are at managing that state change management in between rounds. So like,
Even though I could be playing a better chess player, and this happened in my final match, in the finals in Calcutta, even if you're playing a better chess player, if they make a mistake due to fatigue, it's way easier to capitalize on that on the board than to knock them out in the ring. You have to have great technique, a lot of power. It's like a perfect storm of things that needs to happen to actually knock someone out.
Jeremy (27:58.038)
Makes sense.
Matt (28:06.306)
But you can exercise your advantage in the ring on the board the next round, because it's more likely for them to make a mistake. Does that make sense?
Jeremy (28:14.045)
Mm.
Jeremy (28:17.738)
Fascinating it does it does this is this is blowing my mind. This is so cool. I Have never been a great chess player. I would never even call myself a good chess player because When I started playing chess I was not patient and it also reflected in my sparring as I've aged I've gotten better at both because I am more willing to be patient and that's kind of what I'm hearing what you're talking about this idea of you know, let's
let's play the rules, let's play the opponent, not play the game I want to play, not throw the kicks or necessarily do the opening that I love the most. It's let's be balanced, let's be versatile and see what comes to me.
Matt (29:01.57)
Totally makes sense. And I think with age, with experience, with wisdom, comes that patience and self-awareness that leads to acceptance and then optimization, leaning into your strengths. And that was a big kind of shift for me that happened really through, in some ways through chest boxing. You know, that idea of...
I don't know if you've heard this quote, but how you do something is how you do everything. So I, through Brawl for Recalls, I've had my hand in training over 200 people for their first fight, right? And, and getting to know them first outside of the gym or outside of the ring, and then seeing how their personality is expressed through martial arts or through boxing. It has been reinforced again and again.
that you really don't change a tiger stripes. You really just try to amplify what they already are as much as possible. And for me, I'm a counterpuncher. I like to download my opponent, sit back, wait for mistakes and then capitalize. And so what I'm training for the next Chess Boxing World Championship right now is the state champion of chess. His name is Deepak Arun.
He is as aggressive as it gets on the board. And he's a grand master level in chess. He's higher rated in chess than anyone currently in our community in his weight class. So I think he has an excellent shot at winning the next world championship if he can survive the boxing round. So now that I'm training him to box, I'm like, okay, here's how you defend yourself. Here's a high guard. Here's how you use your feet to stay away.
And he's not doing any of it. He's watching Mike Tyson videos. He's coming to spar, try to knock everyone out having never had a fight before. And I just, I like see where this is going. I'm going to like, try to train them to be more defensive and he's just, you know, going to do him. So.
Jeremy (31:08.974)
Now that begs a question. Are the folks in the chess boxing community, do they play and box generally the same way? Is it common to have an aggressive boxer and a defensive chess player?
Matt (31:24.366)
Dude, this is my favorite thing about commentary. Like I have a great seat for every international chess boxing match. And because it's such an international sport, there's so few of us that we have to fly people in from all over the world in order to have a good show. So what you see at any of these shows is this like Mortal Kombat style, like Olympics in every event where the country that's represented
their culture is expressed through this fighter. And each country has a different relationship with boxing and chess. So I don't know if you've seen those like reels or TikToks or shorts or whatever, where it's like different countries and they're like boxing style or their martial arts style. You know what I'm talking about? So, you know, take that and then also like project that onto chess styles.
Jeremy (32:13.898)
Yeah.
Matt (32:21.878)
that you can be as defensive and boring as it gets on the chessboard. And you can also be like fireworks, exhilarating, aggressive risk-taking on the chessboard, just like you can be in the ring. And so to see how all these different people from all over the world choose to express themselves on the board in the ring is incredible. It's like, there's nothing quite like it.
other than martial arts, but martial arts, you don't have that high, low, that ebb and flow of having to switch between two antithetical or opposite expressions, which is why it's my favorite sport, it's my favorite thing in the world.
Jeremy (32:57.002)
Hmm.
Jeremy (33:02.154)
How often, you mentioned this person that you're working with, being a very high level chess player, but if I understood correctly, no martial arts experience. Is that common in chess boxing? Is someone coming in with either no experience in chess or no experience in martial arts and they're like, this sounds fun. Or are people more like you that they have experience in both?
Matt (33:26.942)
Yeah, the full spectrum. I would say generally, the type of person that chess boxing attracts is your black belt rocket scientist, right? You grew up doing martial arts, you learned discipline and hard work, you apply that to something that you're intellectually curious about.
Jeremy (33:28.938)
Really.
Matt (33:47.362)
and you use martial arts to keep kind of in shape and because you love it and you have this job as an engineer or as a scientist or as something mathematical in general. And along with that comes chess, that there is such a massive overlap between martial artists and chess players. Because both are at their core.
the same types of sources. It is self-awareness and self-discipline. You gotta know who you are and where you stand in order to know what to improve at and what to work on. And then it's a grinders mentality of getting better at something that is an infinite game. You can never perfect chess. You can never perfect a martial art. And so it's people that sign up for dying in the pursuit.
of perfection or beauty in whichever expression that they choose. And so, you know, we have people that, you know, are like Deepak, that, you know, his grandfather was a highly rated grandmaster from India who played Bobby Fischer, arguably the goat of chess. And chess was like in his, you know, in his crib growing up. He was like born to play chess.
And then, you know, later in life found Jiu-Jitsu and then found boxing, which he did as a hobby for three years before he and I connected. So he has a little bit of a foundation in like applying his chest mindset to some martial arts prior to chest boxing. And then you have someone like, like Sakari. Sakari is the most accomplished chest boxer out of Finland. And he had 120 pro fights in Finland.
And his grandfather taught him how to play chess, but he never had a dedicated chess coach. He had never been in a chess tournament. And he was probably around like a 10, 11, 12 year old competitive chess player. So when he started out, he was like, okay, I need to learn the most boring, patient opening ever, because if I get,
Matt (36:09.522)
a round or best case scenario, two or three rounds against his opponent, he's going to tear him up. He's going to make him quit. And then those are two opposite sides of the spectrum. You have everyone in between. And you also have the outliers. Someone like this Latvian named Oleg. Oleg had over 200 amateur fights.
Jeremy (36:16.128)
Mm. Yeah.
Matt (36:34.958)
and was a FIDE master level in chess. So when he joined our community, he was instantly just like the big bad wolf. No one could touch him because he was so excellent at both. He could kind of pull back at whichever was your strength and then go full force on the other and beat you one way or another. So yeah, it's all of it.
Jeremy (36:54.39)
Hmm.
Jeremy (36:59.894)
How does it break down the endings? Which is more common, that it ends on the chessboard or it ends in the ring?
Matt (37:05.066)
Yeah, about 80% of our matches end on the chessboard, but like we were talking about before, it isn't necessarily the better chess player winning. It's just the mistake or the advantage is more easily seen on the chessboard. And a big factor of that is something that we haven't talked about yet, which is resource management. So we have state change management on one side. The other side is resource management. So you have to manage, of course, your energy level, your fatigue.
Jeremy (37:25.06)
Yeah, let's go there.
Matt (37:34.354)
and you have to do that in a regular martial art or boxing match, what people, what a lot of people don't see is you have to do that in a chess match too. So classical chess, the game is at least four hours. And then if you get past move, I think it's 50, you get another two hours. So that is a long, grueling, high calorie burn kind of day. And
Jeremy (37:38.97)
Yeah, yeah, any combat sport's gonna require that.
Jeremy (37:58.067)
Yeah.
Matt (38:00.622)
Uh, in order for every chess boxing match to come to a finite conclusion, an objective result, which is something that we wanted to iterate on and improve from, uh, from boxing. Because I think one of the ways that, uh, boxing MMA suffers is the subjectivity of, of judges. And that leaves room for corruption. That leaves room for, uh,
bad results, which turns fans away. And the beautiful thing about chess boxing is over 99%. So like less than 1% of our matches have ended in a judge's scorecard. Because the only condition for that happening is a stalemate or a draw on the board with equal rounds won in the boxing match. And...
Jeremy (38:57.032)
Hmm.
Matt (38:58.47)
And so that it's a weird like edge case for that to happen. And the way that we ensure that is the chess games are timed. So not only time and like, oh, it's a three minute round then you have to go box. It's timed in that you have, depending on the level of promotion and when you're playing, you have six minutes to play your whole chess game. And if you run out of time in those six minutes, it's like checkmate.
You lose. So 80% of our matches being one on the chessboard. Well, a high percentage of them is people running out of time to play their chess game, and there's a lot of reasons you can run out of time. You can be in a really difficult position on the chessboard and have to use a lot of time to think through it. You could also be using that time to recover and try to get more time in the ring. It can be a strategic burning of time, not just having to use the time.
Jeremy (39:29.197)
Mmm.
Jeremy (39:50.183)
Yeah.
Matt (39:56.746)
And there's a lot of other kind of ways to use that time, but using that resource that you have is another strategic level. If I'm moving too fast against a better chess player, I'm basically making it easier for him to reduce the amount of boxing rounds that he has to go up against me. But if I take too long, then he knows he doesn't really have to take any risks. He just has to play solid and move quick for me to run out of time. He'll never have to checkmate me.
Jeremy (40:00.842)
Hmm.
Matt (40:27.126)
So it's this balancing act and it's all these layers of competition that make it exciting and different every time. You know, like we love martial arts because we get to see two styles match up against each other, two different kinds of strategies. And you take that same kind of love for something within a martial art. And now you have a multiple of that same layer.
Jeremy (40:29.339)
Yeah, it's fascinating.
Matt (40:54.394)
that you can enjoy in a single chess boxing match. And I have a anecdotal kind of story from our last world championship. It's the first time in our sports history where someone was able to pull off a brand new strategy. And because the sport's only 20 years old, we're still seeing a lot of those kinds of innovations and iterations on the sport now, because it's like the early days. It's like the beginning of that bell curve.
Jeremy (40:57.302)
Hmm.
Jeremy (41:22.154)
Hmm.
Matt (41:22.826)
where it's like, okay, everyone's figuring out all the ways to optimize and improve in the sport right now. That will be like, you know, perfected over the next 100, 200, however many years.
Jeremy (41:38.094)
Wow. Okay, there's so much we can dig into and we won't have time to go into all of it. But let's talk about your role. You mentioned that after participating, you and I wanna know about how and how long, you fill a few roles, you know, it sounds like both at the international level and also at the national level. So talk to us about your role within chess boxing.
Matt (42:03.474)
Yeah, and as a role, I rejected for a while. Again, when I did this in 2018, I was focused on me and my story. And this being a chapter of my memoir, not in it helping the greater community or the sport to grow or to make it to the Olympics or any of those things, that now I've kind of taken up.
Uh, you know, uh, more community minded kind of, uh, objective when it comes to those other things. But, um, in 2018, went to Calcutta, India, ended up winning my weight category, 90 kilograms, 198.5 pounds. And, uh, my teammate who joined me in that Kevin von Carber, uh, also won his weight category, 95 kilograms, 208.
And, uh, and both of us leaving that world championship were like, that was cool. Good life experience will be bonded together for life, uh, because of this cool thing we did, um, but you know, that'll probably be it. So had I started doing what I'm doing now, then I'd love to see where, where chest boxing would be. But I kind of went back and, you know, started
looking into whatever my next quest would be. Instead of drilling down, getting more organizational and operational and building a USA chess boxing program. So what changed is in 2019, I went back to compete in the 2019 chess boxing world championship in Istanbul in Turkey.
Jeremy (43:54.226)
Why? You left in 2018 and you were done. What happened in that year?
Matt (44:00.194)
So a couple of things happened. One, at parties, it turned into the thing when I meet Jeremy that stuck in people's mind and people remembered more than anything else. It made me a one of one type of person. And
up to that point, Brawl for a Cause was that. Not many people start promoting fights and start a nonprofit when they're 21 years old. So I had a really early start in this fight promotion and boxing kind of world. And this felt like a level up in that same type of magical matter that exists, that kind of points me in the right direction. So over the course of that year,
the amount of magic that would happen as a result of me talking about chess boxing helps reinforce that this is something worth spending time in. This is something that opened doors, that attracted more people, that created an awesome story. And so when Ipe reached out to me and said, "'Hey, will you fight again?' I did not do the same thing and making it my entire existence.
preparing for the next world championship. I went through like maybe like a 70% kind of fight camp that I did in 2018. And I was also nursing a shoulder injury. So I was like, my heart wasn't as in it. You know, it's the old, I forget the exact quote, but it takes different stuff.
to conquer the world than to rule the world. So people who are on the hunt, who are contenders to win that belt, that is a different mentality than keeping the belt and defending it. And I liked the conquest. I was not as drawn to the idea of staying on top. And this is reflective of something else we talked about earlier in our conversation, which is how you do something, you do everything. I'm an entrepreneur.
Matt (46:17.638)
I love getting from zero to one. I love starting things and either selling it or passing it off to operators. That's my whole career. And events are kind of like that. You know, you have a fight date, you have an event date, you're prepared for it, you execute your perform and then it's done. And so, you know, this part of my personality.
It was expressed in 2019. I lost to the now world champion in 90 kilograms, a Frenchman, who was rated 600 points higher than me in chess. So completely outclassed me on the board, which puts me in a position to have to knock him out. And we didn't talk about this part of the ruleset, but...
You can win by checkmate or knockout. And knockout is kind of split into a couple categories. Knockout can be one punch, boom, he goes down, can't beat a ten count. What people think of when they hear knockout. But it could also be a technical knockout. Which is three knockdowns or stoppages in a round. Or four knockdowns or stoppages in a whole fight. And in the first round, I knocked down my opponent twice. And I had him on the ropes.
Jeremy (47:28.668)
Mmm.
Matt (47:31.746)
for that third stoppage that he survived right before the end of the round. And he checked maybe it'd be the next round. So two, if two things happen, if, you know, I had a little bit more of a high gear or if I landed one more good punch, maybe it would have ended. Or if I was a little bit better at chess and state change management and didn't blunder in that final chess round, he wouldn't have been able to finish me as quickly and I would have had one more boxing round to try to get two more knockdowns or knock them out. So.
Jeremy (47:37.391)
Mmm. Ugh.
Matt (48:02.594)
After that happened, it was the first time that Ipe, the founder of our sport, asked me to co-commentate the rest of the world championship together. So learning, like losing to, you know, this, his name is Tony, losing to Tony in an early round of the world championship, set me up to have a free rest of the week to co-commentate the rest of it, which turned into
the only time that the founder of our sport has commentated a world championship and me being his co-commentator. And it happened three months. Sorry. It happened five months before he passed away. So, so the last words that he said to me in person were become the Joe Rogan of chess boxing, uh, you know, Joe Rogan, podcaster and fight commentator for the UFC. Um,
And his last post on Facebook the day before he died was a USA Today feature, which was the first national press that we got in the United States for chest boxing. And it was my journey into the world championship. So, you know, these two things that happened kind of like set up and gave me this kind of signal. It's like, okay.
I can either be another competitor in this chess boxing international scene and help the sport grow that way in that kind of role, or I can assume this, in my mind, larger role, not just fighting for myself and trying to win another belt, but instead telling all the stories, helping to translate the beauty that we're seeing on the board in the ring to an audience that might not understand it as deeply as the competitors.
Jeremy (49:40.758)
Hmm.
Matt (49:49.166)
And that it can be opened up and better understood and better appreciated if there is that kind of communication or translation role in, you know, in that ringside commentary spot. And so I talked to the other leaders in our community, the other promoters that are leading the international events. And we decided we need an English face for
Jeremy (49:59.944)
Mm.
Matt (50:18.298)
sport. And, and so in the next world championship, I didn't compete. And in all of the promotional events leading up to it, all the kind of jockeying for position in your own country and that kind of thing, I ended up commentating those. And, and that's what led me to the biggest breakthrough in our sport, which happened last year.
Jeremy (50:46.186)
Okay, we're gonna hit that, because I mean, you set up a beautiful cliffhanger right there. But I'm curious because it sounds like you're holding back a little bit on some of the emotional aspects of that 2019 journey and it starting in one way and ending in such a dramatically different way, coupled with the loss of someone that I'm getting the sense you didn't know very well, but have likely come to know quite a bit in retrospect.
Matt (50:50.574)
Thanks for watching!
Matt (51:14.254)
Mm.
Jeremy (51:14.582)
through what they had built. And I'm seeing and hearing a lot of respect, not only for the sport, but for the founder. What was his name again? I'm sorry. Ipe. I'm hearing that you respect Ipe considerably, even though he's passed away.
Matt (51:22.834)
eBay, I-E-P-E.
Jeremy (51:34.29)
Am I, am I, am I reading this right?
Matt (51:36.574)
No, I hate that guy. No, he is our charismatic founder. He is our, essentially what has turned into martyrdom. Like if I zoom out and look.
Jeremy (51:48.846)
That's a great word because you shifted. And anybody who's watching this probably saw what I saw, that as you talked about 2019 and him passing, your face changed. And it didn't change in the way that one would expect of someone who, yeah, he happened, he was there, he was important, but we're four years later, four plus years later, and it still has an impact on you.
Matt (52:14.386)
Yeah, he's a guy that changed my life. Um, and, and he was a friend and mentor. So, so on a personal level, just like, you know, a lot of people lost. Friends or loved ones during COVID. And that's when eBay died. He died in May, 2020. Uh, and then you add a layer of, uh, now, you know, my career and my identity and probably the rest of my life will be painted a color that he created.
Jeremy (52:18.815)
Makes sense.
Matt (52:44.01)
And so there's a lot of reverence and gratitude that comes along with, um, creating something that has, has changed, not just my life, but a lot of people in our community's life. Um, and, and so, yeah, I think what was coming to mind for me right now is, um, is something that, especially in our community, uh, martial artists or fighters, um, surrender.
is what's coming to mind. And I feel a constant tension and battle with the idea of surrender. Because as a fighter, you never wanna give up. Maybe your corner throws in the tower, maybe the ref calls it, but you don't wanna lose because you give up. You can be bested by someone else. That's great.
Jeremy (53:36.811)
Hmm.
Matt (53:40.31)
that now you have lessons to take away from failure and to get better with those. That's awesome. But surrender is really tough for a lot of people. And 2019, my mantra after that world championship was surrender because I am not the best boxer in our community. I'm definitely not the best chess player in our community.
At a time, I think I was the best at state change management, which is why I won my world championship. I was up against a better boxer and chess player in the finals. The reason I beat him is because he made a mistake in the first 15 seconds of the round, which leads me to believe that I used my minute before better. But...
Matt (54:28.974)
When I lost in 2019, it took a degree of surrender and acceptance that my role in this community is not in the arena anymore. It's not fighting to have my hand raised or to have another belt. My role is a little bit more behind the curtain and it's going to help lift other people up.
and put them in the arena for them to have their hand raised to amass a fan base to build storylines around. And the ego wants that to be about yourself and surrender is that counterbalance to ego. It's letting go and flowing with whatever is actually meant for you rather than what you want to make happen. You know, at a lot and there's times for both. But there's been a lot of
um, of surrender and acceptance since 2019, especially because what came right after that world championship, December, 2019 was the pandemic. And we had to accept being stuck inside, not being able to go to the gym, go to the dojo, not being able to do what we really feel like we were put on this planet to do, uh, and had to find other ways to, to express and to stay healthy and to connect and, and all those things. And, and I think that.
Jeremy (55:37.278)
We had to surrender.
Jeremy (55:42.759)
Yeah.
Matt (55:51.498)
Um, to focus on surrender, to meditate on it, to practice, to practice surrender is, um, it's something, it's something that you said earlier, uh, which is that cultivation of patience and wisdom that comes with the, you know, 10,000 kicks, the, the 10,000 hours, uh, of, of mastery.
Jeremy (56:18.582)
All right. Now, I'm going to admit the you telling that part of the story and the emotion contained in it, I completely forgot what you would teed up for me. Before we went there, where was it that you were going to take the story?
Matt (56:36.19)
Yeah, so our inflection point. So I come from startups. I come from really the business world. And when you look at the starting of these big companies, you have this pattern that forms of
You have a passionate, charismatic founder that starts a company and attracts this, this justice league of early employees, uh, that build a really quality product that solves a problem and attracts, uh, a user base that, that leads to scale. And for about 20, about almost 20 years.
we had that start, that zero to one process. And in 2022, a massive influencer named Ludwig Agrin, who made a name for himself as a Twitch streamer. He ended up beating the goat of Twitch streamers Ninja as the most subscribed to Twitch streamer during COVID when everyone was watching Twitch and YouTube.
And YouTube acquired him with an exclusive contract to only stream on YouTube for the biggest buyout ever for a streamer. So a year after he went over to YouTube, he got a big budget from YouTube to stream live events on their platform because they wanted to build up that vertical on YouTube and they wanted sporting events to be a part of it. So Ludwig had an idea.
to do a Smash Boxing event. You ever play Super Smash Bros? So he came up in the Super Smash Bros FGC community and he decided to weave together Super Smash Bros Melee with boxing. So you would play Melee for a round, then you would switch to boxing, then you would go back and forth. And as he looked into getting it sanctioned and getting it insured, he found chess boxing and decided to plug into
Matt (59:01.366)
the existing sport and community in order to host both. And that's around the time I got in touch with him. He was having trouble sanctioning and insuring it. I had been doing that in Georgia for almost 10 years with Brawl for a Cause. And the former head of the California State Athletic Commission,
Sorry, he was the former head for Georgia that now oversaw California. So I had a personal relationship with the guy that Ludwig needed to talk to in order to get the event to happen. So I got in touch with him. I helped him get a sanction and an insurance. I helped him train his fighters, which were all big YouTubers and YouTubers and streamers. And in December 2022, he hosted not just the biggest event in our history.
the views and impressions generated from this event exceeded the aggregate of 20 years of our events all combined. So in 24 hours, he had done over 10 million views. We had over 300,000 concurrent live viewers. And it was a massive coming out party for this sport that this little niche community had been building over the course of the previous 19 years.
Jeremy (01:00:11.606)
That's awesome.
Matt (01:00:19.454)
Because I was able to help him behind the scenes, he let me co-commentate the event with him next to the biggest chess YouTuber Gotham chess Levy Rosman. So the three of us called the fights Levy oversaw the chess I oversaw the boxing Ludwood made it all entertaining and And and we made this massive tidal wave that we're still riding we're still surfing it over a year later
Jeremy (01:00:46.667)
Hmm.
Matt (01:00:47.506)
And this was the first time that the traditional chess community accepted chess boxing as more than a satire, more than a court gesture of like, you know, oh, well, Magnus beat Hikaru, but what would have happened if they boxed after? It was no longer this joke. Now we're seeing actual high level chess players, grandmasters being featured in Ludwig's event.
Jeremy (01:00:59.318)
Hmm.
Matt (01:01:15.13)
all these other Twitch streamers that play chess are now trying to get onto a chess boxing match because it amplifies viewership. It's a compelling story to tell, it's good content. And so now we can use this model of influencer chess boxing to grow our base. They will not be the best chess boxers in the world, but they will attract the most viewers. And if we can use that
Jeremy (01:01:20.719)
Hmm.
Matt (01:01:44.886)
that have no following, but are the best at it, with these people that are maybe good at one of them, or maybe just really entertaining and willing to try it, if we can build cards with both, now we have viewership for high level chess up, chess boxing. And so this inflection point that showed chess boxing to the world, and we'll always be grateful to Ludwig for it, he'll always have a page in the history books for chess boxing. And maybe if he continues to...
promote these, which I'm still working with him to do more. Maybe it won't just be a page. Maybe he'll be one of the huge figures that has a chapter or multiple chapters in the chest boxing book. But because of his involvement in the sport, it changed the face of it and the trajectory of it to where now we're no longer going from zero to one. We have proof of concept and we have adoption. Now it's one to X. It's time to scale it.
Jeremy (01:02:24.638)
Mm.
Matt (01:02:42.766)
And I haven't taken on the challenge of scaling something very, very many times in my career. You know, I'm approaching my mid thirties and up until now I've just done zero to one every time. I've just loved creating and handing off. It's the most fun part. And it's the part that lights me up, gets me passionate, wakes me up in the morning. You know, like I love that part. And back to surrender.
Jeremy (01:03:00.218)
It's the most fun part. It is.
Jeremy (01:03:08.618)
Me too.
Matt (01:03:12.17)
There's this sense that now I'm meant to evolve also. I'm meant to focus on helping to scale this because if not me, who? There are these other kind of world leaders in chess boxing that all kind of have their role. And my role is going to be building the United States or North America side of chess boxing. So starting to attract more fighters, more fans and to tell its story.
through YouTube content, through live streaming, and through our international events. And so, we are doing this at a perfect time. First month of the new year, my big resolution is to double down on content creation around chess boxing and to build a kick-ass Team USA for the next World Championship, because it's being hosted by Russia. What better antagonist could we possibly have?
to go live a Rocky Four story, go over to Eastern Europe where they're hosting it. They're gonna host it in Serbia most likely. We get to go over and battle the snow and the best people in the world at chess boxing, which is Russia, Russia wins every year and try to have this underdog story with some chess grandmasters that have never fought, with some incredible fighters that are rudimentary at chess and this ragtag group of chess boxing.
Jeremy (01:04:33.75)
I love it.
Matt (01:04:40.083)
American superheroes that need to channel their inner Stallone and take on the Russians.
Jeremy (01:04:45.991)
This is every late 80s martial arts film in real life, and I absolutely love it, which leads to the question, how can I, how can we, and I don't just mean we as Whistlekick, we as this broad global audience, how can we help? How can we get involved? How can we watch?
Matt (01:05:04.466)
It's time to ring the—
Matt (01:05:08.658)
It's time to blow the dog whistle that only chess boxers can hear. It is time to sound the alarm. I've held back from publicly being like, okay, I'm organizing a team. We're gonna figure out how to fund it. We're gonna get sponsors. We're gonna fly over and compete in the World Championship. Every time in the World Championship, it's been me and one other American. That's all it's been. People reach out and be like,
Uh, you know, who do I need to be to my weight class to join team USA is like, dude, if you can pay your way over there, you're on like, this is not like a competitive, it's like, if you're willing, come on, we're not there yet. It's the beginning of it and you can help build it. And for some people, that's really exciting for others. It's really daunting. Uh, but this year it's, it's that changes, you know, if you have any interest.
Jeremy (01:05:50.003)
We're not there yet. We'll get there, but we're not there yet.
Matt (01:06:04.93)
in combining your martial art experience with chess and challenging yourself, even if you have no chance of winning, even if you just want to live an incredible story and challenge yourself in a new way, come on. We'd love to have you. We want to bring a big Team USA. We want to, we have almost a full year to prepare. It's going to be November or December 2024. So plenty of time.
Jeremy (01:06:20.266)
Mm.
Matt (01:06:31.766)
to get with a chess coach, to start training boxing specifically, to start learning state change management and how to weave them together, and to challenge yourself in a way that few on the planet have been able to do. Which you know, if that doesn't excite you, this isn't for you. Tune in and watch it. Support us that way. But if that does get, you know, spark a little fire in you, you know, reach out. And, and, and really that's the purpose of.
This conversation, the collaboration with Sensei Seth, the more content that I can create or collaborate on that gets chest boxing out there, the more experiences like the one I had sitting in my recovery bed with a YouTube video that auto played, the more experiences like that I'm gonna be able to offer to other people, the more calls to action.
or in a hero's journey is called an inciting incident when a hero is pulled into their quest. That inciting incident moment happens from interviews like this. So when hearing this right now, we'll sign up for Team USA chest boxing. We'll compete against Russia and we'll live out their hero's quest.
Jeremy (01:07:48.314)
I know this audience and I'm thinking of people I'm not gonna go so far as, definitely not gonna name them. And I'm probably not gonna reach out to them directly. But there are names I'm thinking of, there are folks that I know well enough to know. This is right up their alley. So my challenge to all of you out there in the audience is every one of us has a chance to take this thing. Most of us know what it's like to feel like, and you didn't use this word, but I'm going to, a gimmick.
And in the early days, the way you described the way the international chess community saw chess boxing, that was the word that was coming to mind for me. Because we all know what that feels like, we all have, I feel, a responsibility to maybe lend some energy. Doesn't mean you're on the team. Doesn't mean you're watching every match. But you also know people who would find this really cool. It could be a beautiful gateway into martial arts for your friends that have no interest in watching martial arts.
So get out there, watch, participate, reach out. How would they reach out? What kind of contact website stuff do they need?
Matt (01:08:53.042)
Yeah. At moving with Matt on all platforms, same exact handle moving with Matt, the T and Matt only is one, one T and, uh, yeah, something to DM on any of those. We have a discord channel, uh, with a chest boxing discord where we upload workouts, we share progress. And in Atlanta, we have a weekly training on Saturdays at two PM at Decatur boxing gym.
And we'll be broadcasting those trainings leading up to the World Championship. We'll be uploading our workouts so you can do it along with us at home. But if you're in the Atlanta area and want to come physically do it with me and the state champion of chess, Deepak Arun, he leads the chess, I lead the boxing, and the state change management training. So that's the best way to get in touch. And I'll also say you never have to take a punch to train chess boxing.
If you want to strengthen your mind and body, if you want to improve your strategy, your strength, you can use this as a vehicle for personal development and for performance enhancement. You don't have to put yourself in harm's way, you never have to spar, but doing both at the same time, you get incredible benefits from it. You're gonna be able to more rapidly prime for whatever comes next in your day.
If you're, if you're in sales and you need to present and perform and close. It is like, it is like right before a boxing round works. Like, okay, this is it. I'm here right now. I visualize success. I've done my breath work to be able to, to engage, uh, my, my brain, to get more oxygen in my bloodstream, to be able to be at my best in this moment, that there are translatable skills from, from doing chest boxing as a hobby, not, not just at the highest form of competition.
So if you want to take this up as a hobbyist, we'll have more and more resources coming out. I would point mostly to my YouTube, so youtube.com backslash at moving with Matt, where we'll be doing a lot of state change management videos and like the collaboration that sparked this conversation with you, Jeremy, with Sensei Seth. And if you want to learn more about that sport, I think he did an excellent job of breaking down how it works, making it funny.
Jeremy (01:11:11.407)
He always does.
Matt (01:11:12.274)
making it entertaining. So check out that video too and shout out to Seth.
Jeremy (01:11:16.978)
Awesome, awesome. Well, I appreciate you being here and we're gonna wind down here, but I want you to hang on because we've got something to talk about after we wrap here. But to the audience, I mean, you've got your marching orders now. This is cool stuff. And it's, like we said towards the top, it's not often that, here we are closing in on nine years doing the show that we get to bring you new things, but we're always looking to bring you new things. And thank you to Seth, thank you to Andrew for.
Matt (01:11:26.926)
Okay, great.
Jeremy (01:11:45.686)
for making all this happen. So if you wanna go deeper, and you should, you know where to go. Check out the show notes. We're gonna have everything linked in there. Whis Maybe you're driving in the car and you don't have time right now, but that's where you wanna go. And so here we are, Matt. We've talked about chess boxing, but most of the audience is not, they're not chess boxers. They're not yet, at least, Eddie Lay. They're martial artists of all ilk.
I think the one thing that they, most of them have in common is that they at least understand if not speak English, right? Because we don't, we broadcast this show in English. What do you want to leave them with? What thoughts, words? How do you want to wrap this?
Matt (01:12:34.346)
Because it is a martial arts community and podcasts, I will say one more thing that will lead into what I'll leave everyone with. And for a while I was kind of lost in what my next quest would be.
And even though I'm kind of taking up chest boxing and growing it as my main quest line, I still need these sub quests or side quests or goals in order to feel whole and to be excited about life. And so one that I took up recently is pursuing my black belt in Taekwondo. Taekwondo was my first martial art when I was a little kid. I started when I was five.
And I moved around a lot with my single mom when we moved from Charlotte to Atlanta. There wasn't a place I could practice that was convenient. That was close. So I stopped at Purple Belt when I was a little kid. And through a Brawl for a Cause event, we had a Taekwondo black belt, fourth degree, guy named Dane Turner compete in it. And he and I became friends from it.
And I followed his journey to becoming a two-time national champion in combat taekwondo, in sparring. And he lives close by. And my New Year's resolution and newest series on YouTube is back to black belt. So he is leading me through kind of an expedited catch up, getting me back to purple first.
Uh, and then I'm going to catalog the journey to all the way to black belt. So, uh, if you like that kind of content, if you want to see me, you know, try spinning back kicks and, and fallen over and, and iterating to try to get better at it, come check that out. And what I want to leave everyone with is, um, it is never too late in life. To start something you, you may be sitting here thinking.
Matt (01:14:45.83)
I've been in my martial art for 20 years. This is what I do. This is how my body moves. This is how I, you know, this is what I know and all my friends are in this space. Why would I branch out? Why would I try something new? And to me, that kind of feeling that I get when I start a new journey, when I start back at White Belt and I'm being humbled.
And I get that really fast pace, those goosebumps, those failing to fall forward kind of moments when I feel most alive. And if you're looking for something new to try, if you're looking for a new goal, what I'll leave you with is the encouragement to lean into it and take an action step towards it.
Jeremy (01:15:23.126)
Hmm.
Matt (01:15:39.85)
and just start and see where it goes. You can hate it, you can stop it at any time, but you won't know it'll always kind of be an idea in the back of your head until you turn that potential energy into kinetic energy and take action on it. So I had been wanting to achieve a black belt since I was a little kid. I was approaching mid thirties and kind of looking down the barrel of like, maybe this will never happen. And I decided not to accept that.
and to start taking steps towards it. And I only say that to say, I hope it encourages you to do the same. And if you wanna watch someone on their journey of doing that, come check it out on YouTube.
J