Courtesy of Combat Strike Photography
The newest event at the Arnold Sports Festival may not be a timeless sport, but it’s certainly many centuries old.
Attendees at the festival, scheduled for March 3-6, will be able to witness medieval fighting, a team sport that has seen growing popularity over the last 20 years or so. Using rules similar to those of the armored jaunts of the 1300-1500s, teams of five fight their opponents to the ground with real swords and full armor.
Rich Elswick, the owner of the Detroit Fight Club and director of medieval fighting at the Arnold, brought the idea for full-contact medieval steel fighting to expo organizers before the March 2020 event, which was eventually canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The festival returned this past September in a reimagined, smaller format. In 2022, medieval fighting will finally take the stage.
“The sport is pretty spectacular and until you’ve seen it in person, videos just don’t do it justice,” Elswick says. “It’s like (when) you watch football on TV and then you go to the game. You hear the pads smacking and the players and it’s like, ‘Oh, I get it now.’”
Elswick became enamored with the sport in 2012, when he joined some friends and the first team of Americans traveling to compete in the Battle of the Nations in Russia. He has been fighting ever since, watching the sport grow considerably. His first Battle of the Nations event had 12 teams competing; now, it’s up to 40-some.
“The thing I love about this is it’s far more sport-oriented, in the aspect of we’re recreating the medieval tournament as it was,” Elswick says. “A lot of our rules are almost identical to what they were in the period of the 14th to the 16th century, so it’s truly a sport. We’re athletes; we train.”
Inside the list, or fighting area, five-fighter teams face off with the objective of bringing the opposition to the ground. At the Arnold, teams compete in sets of three fights, each lasting 15 minutes The weapons are real, but dull, and no thrusting is allowed.
Despite the less-than-lethal weapons, when medieval fighters compete, it’s still a physical sport.
“Just like (when) a boxer or an MMA fighter goes into a ring,” Elswick says, “they know they’re going to get hit. They might get hurt.”
Competitors are often intensely focused during a fight, Elswick says, tuning out everything around them and getting into a sort of flow state.
“You’re putting your body to the test,” he says. “You’re putting your mind to the test. I’ve seen very few people not changed by the experience.”
The Detroit Fighting Club reached out to the Arnold about adding a medieval fighting competition to the expo around the same time Arnold events in other countries were adding medieval fighting to their line-ups. This year, teams from the U.S., Canada and China are set to compete in a single-elimination tournament.
Medieval fighting will take place at the Arnold 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Saturday, March 5 in the Greater Columbus Convention Center’s Hall B.
Claire Miller is the assistant editor. Feedback is welcome at cmiller@cityscenemediagroup.com
