Everything in the business is based around the idea of a World Championship. WWE, World Heavyweight Championship, Universal Title, the ROH Title, or the IWGP Title - they are all World Championships. The best of the best.
... in itself the title of world champion does not give any significicant advantages, if it is not acknowledged by the entire chess world, and a champion who does not have the chess world behind him is, in my view, a laughing-stock.
Few in the Nineties would have ventured to prophesy that the remote dim singer of the Celtic Twilight would, in a new age, become the leading poet of the English-speaking world. None have disputed the claim of William Butler Yeats to that title.
I got heavier, I got stronger, I won the European championship title in powerlifting, I broke three world records so everything was going perfect.
Being the United States champion, it makes me elevate the title even more because, at the end of the day, that is what I wanna do. I wanna elevate the title, whether it be the world championship, the universal championship, any of these titles.
After that, Kasparov stepped back from chess which is, and I want this to be clear, not good for chess in general at all. As a whole, the current situation in the chess world leaves a lot to be desired.
We won the European Championship last September and now the world title. That is some year for French beach soccer! Now comes the hard part. We have to keep improving and that's difficult because it's tough to do better than winning a world title.
Most chess books only sell a few thousand copies, and a book titled something like "Women in Chess" would sell even fewer. The idea with this title was to spread the book outside the competitive chess world. I'm interested in attracting readers who love chess but play only casually, and feminists interested in male-dominated fields.
I think of Bret Hart as somebody who held the Intercontinental championship like it was the World Heavyweight championship. Every title match he was in felt important, like it was the most important thing on the show. The way he carried himself and the matches he had, it was just everything I thought a champion should be.
On the other hand, chess is a mass sport now and for chess organisers shorter time control is obviously more attractive. But I think that this control does not suit World Championship matches.
Chess is similar to boxing. You need to develop a strategy, and you need to think two or three steps ahead about what your opponent is doing. You have to be smart. But what’s the difference between chess and boxing? In chess, nobody is an expert, but everybody plays. In boxing everybody is an expert, but nobody fights.
In 1968, I fought and won the world middleweight karate championship by defeating the world's top fighters. I then held that title until 1974, when I retired undefeated.
That's one of the great oddities of baseball: Success is relative. A hitter who fails 70 percent of the time at the plate is a potential member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and many World Championship teams lose more than 70 games during their title-winning seasons.
You bring to chess facets of your personality and what you are. I have interests other than chess, like music and world and current affairs. I also have many friends around the world with whom I like to keep in touch.
My dad was in a hospital for months. The doctors told my dad he would never be able to walk again. My dad beat all the odds. He came back and was able to walk and start boxing again. He went to No. 1 in the world at welterweight to fight for the world title. But he never had his chance to fight for a world title.
Being the undisputed world champion is a relief. We instituted a unified chess title, I am the absolute world champion.