Lately this samurai sojutsu sparring video has been floating around Facebook (you can see it on the MABD Facebook page here), and it got me curious about historical martial arts...

So, I dug some cool videos up to share with you. :)

In this first vid, two practitioners of historical Western martial arts are sparring with metal sabers. Yes, they are sparring with metal swords. Even blunted, that is some dangerous stuff. Check it out:

https://youtu.be/n5w2Mh6CyXo

What really amazed me about that video was how many times a cut to the hand or wrist would have ended the match. In the movies it's always a beheading or someone gets run through, but I guess in real life sword fights are won by a margin of centimeters (time to work that into one of my fiction novels, I think).

In this next video, the Japanese Armored Battle League is having their first tournament, featuring fights between fully armored knights and samurai.

Say what?!?!

I know, I geeked out a little too. However, the end result is a lot less cool and pretty than you might think. Bottom line? I guess on the battlefield, technology makes a big difference in the outcome of a fight.

See for yourself:

https://youtu.be/TWiaRhQDZFE