If you're tired of being used as a punchbag in Mixed Martial Arts, or feel the need for more pain in your life, here's just the sport for you: Full Contact Medieval Combat.
The eminent historian and BBC broadcaster Tom Holland sums up full contact medieval combat during his visit to the 2014 IMCF World Championships at Castillo Belmonte, Spain, for BBC’s “Making History” show.
“The action was a whole dimension away from the staged minuet of battle re-enactments.
It was a bit like rugby – only played in full armor.
It was a bit like ice hockey – only with swords and maces.
It was a bit like boxing – only with any form of contact, up to and including smacking your opponent around the head with a pole-axe – permitted.
It was violent, it was intense, it was viscerally a sport.
Thirty seconds in and I knew I loved it.”
The sport began to take shape 15 years ago in Eastern Europe, where medieval re-enactors looked to find a way to truly re-live medieval combat. It is a revival of the medieval tournament fighting that was used to train and hone the skills of knights in the Middle Ages.
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For team fighting and dueling, the fighters wear up to 35 kgs of fully authentic medieval armor and wield authentic weapons with rounded edges. Certain shapes of weapon are also prohibited for the sake of safety.
In keeping with all martial arts there are referees and rules for the sake of safety.
There's more at the link.
The 2015 World Championships will be held this coming weekend at Malbork in Poland. Here's a promotional video clip.
Looks a bit brutal for my taste. I think I'll pass.
Peter
Rounded edges?
ReplyDeleteWimps.
Sorry Charlie but we were doing this back in the late 1980's and 90's.
ReplyDeleteA group of SCA knights broke off to form a group that fought "live steel" as we named it back then. The goal was to add realistic medieval combat to our receation activities using period correct weapons and armour.
We earned our ranks though one on one tournament combat and large group melees.These groups are still going strong. The largest is The Adrian Empire, of whic I was a founding member and there are other groups such as HHACA, ARMA and others that have been reviving the actual medieval sword texts and putting them into practice. All of these organizations use real weapons and armour.That isn't even counting the jousting groups (real jousting, not the Ren Faire stuff)
Nope, this has been going on for quite a long time, here in the USA and other countries too.
A longer piece on Vice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbG_ktYFNPE
ReplyDeleteThe SCA has better parties, anyway.
ReplyDeleteVivat Atlantia!
Cool, but I'll stick with my rattan thank you. I want to hit people not worry about killing em.
ReplyDeleteAnd because someone else did it first...
Long Live Caid!
And all the other kingdoms too ;)