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Fight Night
Jun. 7th, 2019 11:52 pmThe first Friday of every month, J's sword academy has an open "Fight Night," and this month was the first time that he's gone to Fight Night when I haven't been sick, so I went to watch. There were maybe 12-15 people participating, and J. did five duels. I video-recorded each of them on my camera.
They are all very polite! And they have to wear so much gear... J. had on a fencing mask, a protector for the back of the head that goes on over the mask, a leather gorget to protect his neck, a padded jacket called a gambeson, and his fancy gloves. He had to put this all on every time he did a fight, and since they were sharing gorgets and the back-of-the-head protectors it could get complicated. Other people also had knee pads and elbow pads. It was only 65 or so today, and he got very sweaty, so it's going to be pretty intense in the summer heat.
Mostly they fought with swords, but some pairs had "axes" plus daggers, and some had spears plus daggers - those were especially interesting. We saw one fight that was just daggers. One of the young men, who was showing off some fancy sais, had five out-of-town family members come to watch because he's graduating on Tuesday - most of us assumed he was graduating from college because he was so tall and had a beard, but it was just high school!
The tradition afterwards is for people to meet at Mezza Luna for pizza, and I wanted the whole Fight Night experience so we drove over there for that, though J. was pretty out of it from exhaustion (and dehydration, though he filled my water bottle multiple times during the event and drank it all, and from being so cold because his t-shirt was soaking wet). We each had a slice of pizza, then we went home. So now I've seen what Fight Night is all about.
They are all very polite! And they have to wear so much gear... J. had on a fencing mask, a protector for the back of the head that goes on over the mask, a leather gorget to protect his neck, a padded jacket called a gambeson, and his fancy gloves. He had to put this all on every time he did a fight, and since they were sharing gorgets and the back-of-the-head protectors it could get complicated. Other people also had knee pads and elbow pads. It was only 65 or so today, and he got very sweaty, so it's going to be pretty intense in the summer heat.
Mostly they fought with swords, but some pairs had "axes" plus daggers, and some had spears plus daggers - those were especially interesting. We saw one fight that was just daggers. One of the young men, who was showing off some fancy sais, had five out-of-town family members come to watch because he's graduating on Tuesday - most of us assumed he was graduating from college because he was so tall and had a beard, but it was just high school!
The tradition afterwards is for people to meet at Mezza Luna for pizza, and I wanted the whole Fight Night experience so we drove over there for that, though J. was pretty out of it from exhaustion (and dehydration, though he filled my water bottle multiple times during the event and drank it all, and from being so cold because his t-shirt was soaking wet). We each had a slice of pizza, then we went home. So now I've seen what Fight Night is all about.