AMHERST — Analytical thinking has never been a problem for Amherst native Will MacLeod, a longtime chess player and Cornell University senior majoring in applied mathematics.
As a college freshman, though, MacLeod joined a school boxing club as his introduction to the sport, then began going to a local fight club, adding an entirely different, more physical skill set.
“I generally have the philosophy, the mindset, of being good at everything,” MacLeod says. “The idea is being able to achieve at a level of competition in any type of endeavor, and not being one-dimensional.”
With that in mind, the 2022 Amherst Regional High School graduate is now excelling at chessboxing, a sport that combines his passion for chess with a newfound love for boxing. he recently took home a silver medal from the recently completed World Chessboxing Championship, the seventh such international competition, and held during the last week in September in Loznica, Serbia.
At 21, MacLeod is the youngest American competitor in a sport that merges the two disciplines by having three-minute rounds of chess matches followed by three-minute rounds of boxing bouts. This moving between where athletes are using their brains and using their brawn is a “very unique thing,” MacLeod said.
“These things are pretty dissimilar,” MacLeod said. “A big part is mastering the transition; you’re playing chess after getting hit in the head.”
Each is won either via a checkmate, a knockout or a withdrawal. “You can win in either format, and keep alternating until there’s a winner,” MacLeod said.
Many come to the sport with boxing skills and having to then learn chess, but MacLeod is one of the few who took the opposite path, having his first amateur bout in May, and now has to figure out how to concentrate on playing chess with a high heart rate after being in the boxing ring.
“I’ve been playing chess since I was 4, my dad taught me how to play,” MacLeod said. He then played with friends and took chess seriously throughout high school at Amherst Regional.
Though interested in combat sports in high school, he figures he must have seen a viral clip of chessboxing at some point.
“It was something in my subconscious, it popped back up seeing if it was something I could do,” MacLeod said.
He reached out to the main organizer for Team USA and went to Atlanta to try out, shortly after his initial amateur bout.
That included the beginning of his training, including running, lifting weights and learning “fast chess” skills for the blitz chess tactics for the five, three-minute rounds, with the chess board being placed in the middle of the ring.
“You want to get better at both chess and boxing,” MacLeod said. “You have to prepare for the format specifically.”
Selected for the 15-member team, which includes both men and women, MacLeod arrived in Serbia for the weigh in, qualifying for the 61.2 kilogram weight class (about 135 pounds) with seven others, part of a field that included around 200 competitors from 30 countries.
MacLeod ended up competing in three matches in four days, getting to the gold medal round, with all of his matches decided on the chessboard. Along the way he beat a French competitor who was the defending world champion in the 55-kilogram weight class (121 pounds), and then a Turkish entrant.
In the finals, though, he lost to Nicolò Borschi, an Italian former world champion, who was the highest-rated competitor in chess and had previously been voted Chessboxer of the Year.
Because professional boxers are more likely to get into the sport, adding chess to their resumes, than the route MacLeod took, many of the competitions end in technical knockouts in the ring. MacLeod’s strategy is to survive the boxing long enough to win on the chess board.
Still a relative newcomer, before the first match MacLeod had to adapt his spar headgear when his hair was getting in the way, and when an assistant called to braid his hair didn’t arrive on time. MacLeod chopped off some of his hair right on the spot to keep it from being a distraction.
His success also helped the United States as a team to finish second in the medal count, ahead of France and behind only Russia, which had the most competitors.
Accompanying the team overseas was a production crew with “60 Minutes,” the CBS newsmagazine. A segment on chessboxing is expected to be part of an upcoming edition of that show.
While Olympic athletes gain fame when representing their home countries, MacLeod said he is not yet a celebrity on the Cornell campus, though people who know him, and others who follow him on social media, are aware of his chessboxing skills.
He has a series of videos on YouTube, including one where he explains the dynamics of the competition, putting it in simple chess and boxing terms: “If you lose your queen, you better have a pretty good left hook.”
In addition to the silver medal, MacLeod earned one of five revelation awards, given to those outstanding new competitors. As a reward, he got to keep his competition gloves.
MacLeod graduates next spring after spending the last two summers interning with a finance company on Wall Street. Yet even as he begins a professional career, and the big commitment from the sport — training two hours per day every day and having to lose 15 pounds before the tournament to make weight — he said he will be ready for the 2026 international competition.
“They want me back, and I want to get the gold,” MacLeod said.