What a great weekend!

Now what a weekend! Not only I got the see this beautiful city, I also managed to win the fight that I was looking forward to during all these weeks of training!

Everything started off Friday night, when I arrived in Cologne at the place where I would fight the next day, at the night club called "Gloria". I got to see all the people preparing the ring, the seats and the technical equipment and I met up with Andrew Costello and his trainer David for the first time. We went straight to the weigh in where I was delighted to see that I made the 75kg limit! I didn't really drink or eat anything throughout the entire day, so I was starving for food. So Andrew, Konrad, David and me literally hurried to find a restaurant and a couple of delicious steaks. After that we returned to our apartments to get a good night sleep before the big event.

Saturday me and Konrad had breakfast in the city, we got to see the cathedral and he bought some souvenirs for his relatives and friends.

7pm: All the fighters arrived at the "Gloria" and Iepe and his helpers explained the event schedule. Since I had the white pieces I got white pants, white wraps and the red gloves and went straight to my room where my trainer was already waiting for me. Now I started to feel the excitement but Gert (my trainer) kept me busy by walking me through the strategy. I was really confident, because I already knew my opponent and because I was definitely prepared for the boxing as well as for the chess.

9.15pm: Finally, the announcer shouted out my name and I heard my entry music so I went into the hall. The assistant lead me through the crowd to the majestic looking ring that was lit up quite impressive. Surprisingly I wasn't even that nervous because everything felt so familiar. Lots of things were similar to last year's fight. Then my opponent Jan came in and the crowd got even louder, no wonder since he's the local hero!

The first chess round wasn't that spectacular. I started: 1. f4 (Bird's opening). He had a quite unusal defense for this opening, so I lost a bit of time during these first 4 minutes.

Now it got really serious! I put on my gloves and the boxing started. I was careful during this first round and wanted to see what Jan was doing. He was aggresive but I covered myself pretty good and gained a lot of confidence.

2nd chess round: I didn't believe what I saw there at first! He blundered and I got a free knight, so from now on it was obvious that I would win at least the chess game. Preparing for a rough next boxing round I put on my gloves again and like I expected he heavily attacked me. I took advantage of the fact that he wasn't covered that good and hit him quite hard a couple of times (I didn't want anybody to believe that I just won this fight because of the chess game...).

3rd chess round: He blundered again and now it would have been quite pointless to go on playing if this would have been a normal game of chess. But he was looking to knock me out, so he took his time and waited for the next boxing round go begin, which was the most challenging one since he used his right hand over and over again just waiting for me to run into it. At the end of the round he seemed to be exhausted and I drove him into the corner landing a couple of good punches.

As we got into the 4th round of chess we shaked hands and he gave up! I was definitely prepared for additional boxing rounds, but the chess would have been over earlier anyway, so I just enjoyed the audients applause, got out of the ring watched Andrew's and Konrad's fights and went on partying throughout the rest of the night! ;-)

At this point I want to thank Iepe, Gert, Nico, Guido and all of the other helpers who made this event possible. I enjoyed every minute and I am looking forward to the next one!

Sebastian