MMA Goes Medieval, 'Knight' Fights to Become Fixture at Events

Taking a page from the Medieval Times book of crowd entertainment, Russian mixed martial arts promotion M-1 Global began hosting armored knight jousts as in-between-fight spectacles in 2014.

The jousts expanded to one-on-one sword-fighting—ostensibly between two trained “knights” knowledgeable in the ways of armored combat. These two fighters would step into the Octagon garbed in plate mail and proceed to smash each other in the face with shields and swords as an official kept track of things.

Seeing as violence, like fashion, is cyclical, the exhibitions became wildly popular, to the point that M-1 plans to devote entire events to knight fights.

MMAFighting.com reports that the new event is called “M-1 Medievel” and will be underway as soon as promoters can find enough knights to fill an evening of medieval hack-smashery.

In any case, take a look above for footage of the latest M-1 knight clash. Strangely enough, the shield given to participants appears more liable than the sword to do any real damage in these bouts.

We can only assume Syrio Forel, whom I refuse to believe is (Spoiler Alert!) dead, can scarcely keep up with the influx of walk-ins at his water-dancing academy.

What do we say to the shield trying to punch our sinuses through our frontal lobe?

Not today.

Dan is on Twitter. Armored knight fighting could definitely never end in anything tragic and terrible.