Did you know that the mixed martial arts (MMA) legend Mark Hunt is an avid chess player?
And that he’s so good that he is, in fact, among the top 1% of chess players in the world?
Yes, that’s right.
According to the following post, Hunt has been in the top 99 percentile of chess players around the world as early as in 2021…
And he continues to play until this day.
He first started playing chess as a means of utilizing his free time:
I actually was just trying to find ways to entertain myself.
Just, playing chess was a board game and it was cheap, so I taught myself how to play.
As he stated in another interview, he likens chess with martial arts as well:
The object of this game is to demolish the other guy.
It’s a battle on all fronts. There’s strategy and trying to make the moves at the right time.With chess, there’s so many different moves and you can make one wrong move and it sets you back a few times.
It’s exactly like fighting.
It gets Hunt’s competitive juices flowing:
It’s like fighting.
You’re trying to get to the highest level.I’m trying to be the world’s best, it’s competitive.
