By: Sports DeskOctober 8, 2025 04:46 PM IST 4 min readD Gukesh resets the chess board after losing to Hikaru Nakamura at Checkmate: USA vs India. (RIGHT) Nakamura throws Gukesh's king into the crowd. (PHOTOS: Screengrabs via Chessbase India and Chess.com)The chatter around Hikaru Nakamura flinging world champion D Gukesh’s king into the crowd after defeating the Indian in an exhibition game in USA called Checkmate: USA vs India, have dominated headlines in recent weeks with a lot of people seeing nothing wrong with it while some feel that it was disrespectful to the champion. Grandmaster Fabiano Caruana who was on the USA team with Nakamura saw the incident first hand and opened up about it.Caruana said that while he would not do something flashy like that, he sees no big deal in Nakamura reacting like that because that was what the event was all about. In the days since the controversy, it has emerged that it was the event organisers who had suggested to the players to do things like throwing the king into the fans or even breaking a king if they win, just to make it look like a sports event and entertain the fans, a fact which was corroborated by Caruana.ALSO READ | ‘No disrespect’: Story behind Hikaru Nakamura tossing Gukesh’s king at fans after checkmating world champion“Well, to start with, it’s not my style to do something like that. So it’s not something I would do. On the other hand, since it’s part of what you expect from this event, I don’t really see the big deal. You know, if that’s how Hikaru celebrates, I certainly don’t see it as disrespectful. It’s not my style to do something flashy like that. Hikaru obviously planned it and it was also the idea of the event from the organizers and the players on team India were told the same thing. That’s the idea here you know. They probably would have also celebrated if they had won. Also in general, India is a pretty celebratory nation right? I mean not known for their lack of a plum. I think like especially when they won the Olympiad for example, they they were celebrating big time there,” he said on the C-Squared YouTube channel.America shouldn’t be allowed to host chess events- they turn everything into WWE-style drama. An absolute mockery of the game.#Chess pic.twitter.com/yDJnsai7oX— Meru (@MeruOnX) October 5, 2025https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsCaruana also stressed that events like Checkmate and more serious tournaments like the Candidates as well as the World Championships can and should be allowed to co-exist.“I think that a lot of it is that we’re looking at the internet which is not a real place. It’s all all fake. It’s people trying to trying to get clicks on Twitter. So, I wouldn’t read too much into that. There are going to be people who genuinely don’t like this event because they think it’s not, you know, how chess should be. Chess should be serious. I agree. Chess is a serious thing. There are a lot of serious events that that are the main draw in chess. The the world championship is the main draw in chess. The Candidates is the main draw. These are events where people who play, put everything on the line. You might have one chance in your career to become world champion. Maybe zero chances for most people. You might have one chance to play in the Candidates, maybe a few if you’re lucky. And people put everything in those events. And those events will continue. Then you have something like this where the players are just there to to have fun and probably to celebrate with their team if they win. Those two things can coexist. Actually, they probably should coexist. I mean, they probably do help one another as long as we don’t forget about having both,” he said.© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd