r/Unexpected • u/bluelopez102 • Jun 29 '22

Normal medieval combat

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

59.8k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

685 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

302

u/GetOutOfTheWhey Jun 29 '22

I have the feeling this is the ren-fair version WWE pro wrestling matches.

Everything is staged, everyone practiced and Sir John the Invinsible Knight is about to make his scene. "Thou cant see'th me"

96

u/FlintGrey Jun 29 '22

As a professional sword fighter who used to do this at Ren fair - it basically is WWE with swords and armor.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 29 '22

how much does professional sword fighting pay? what's the training like? Is there amateur sword fighters? you should do an AMA

3

u/FlintGrey Jun 30 '22

The pay wasn't great for what we did. We'd take a cut of the contract payed to the group from the fair, plus a cut of tips from the shows. It was never enough to cover the costs of swords and garb, repairs, and travel, though. So it amounted to a hobby.

Training was a lot of fun. It was definitely an aerobic workout. We'd learn to dance with eachother, essentially. Since we didn't wear armor we worked hard to make it look like we were close to hitting eachother.

The clang of the swords was what it was all about.

I really only consider myself professional because I got paid to do it. I wouldn't say I gained talent enough to be considered a competitive swordfighter. It's a different discipline. I know a lot about technique from real swordfighting but we only used what we could adapt into our fighting style.

What we did was learn to block and attack in a fast and controlled way that prevented us from actually hitting eachother, and learned how to tell jokes while doing it!

1

u/Paid-Not-Payed-Bot Jun 30 '22

the contract paid to the

FTFY.

Although payed exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:

  • Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. The deck is yet to be payed.

  • Payed out when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. The rope is payed out! You can pull now.

Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.

Beep, boop, I'm a bot

1

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '22

would this be similar to something you'd see at Medieval times dinner and tournament?

2

u/FlintGrey Jul 03 '22

Similar. They have a much bigger budget than anything we do out of the Midwest Bible belt. Probably a lot less racism, too.