Postby John_Clements » Mon Apr 04, 2005 12:14 pm
Hi,
Yes, I have countless times. I highly recommend doing so if you have the opportunity --provided you have first obtained a respectable degree of skill in RMA. Always be sure to proceed in such encounters by using your historical weapons and associated open rules, not their sporting tool and duelling game etiquette. Hopefully the other will happily oblige.
If you are already familiar and experienced with sport fencing you will quickly see the advantages of a more well-rounded martial approach compared to their restricted ritualized one. (e.g., free-hand use, closing-in, strong beats, full-arm cuts, kicks, disarms, throws, half-swording, etc.). You should be able to take advantage of the limitations and inherent bad habits the sport version engenders by its nature (as well as the general ignorance I have found sport fencers seem to invariably have about the actual effectiveness of our craft). But, if you are not familiar with or experienced in sport fencing (or if you just try to play their game with their rules and their tools) then the technical precision, finesse, disciplined athleticism, and tactical maneuvers it utilizes will certainly exploit you, leaving little opportunity to react with the power of the historical style. The same thing can also be said for bouting against a kendoka in Japanese sport fencing.
Keep in mind, “the legacy modern fencing (whether “classical” or “sport”) has inherited is one filled with misconceptions and prejudices about the true nature of Medieval and Renaissance close-combat. This is a simple result of several key factors in modern fencing practice: the lack of experience with two-weapon combinations, inexperience with two-hand swords or pole-arms, omission of close-in seizing and disarming techniques, prohibiting of grappling and wrestling techniques, ignoring the use of the free-hand and 360-degree fighting, as well as the exclusion of half-swording not to mention the limited target areas permitted and the deficiency in test-cutting practice using sharp blades, facing multiple opponents or disimiliar weapons. These elements were long integral skills in fencing. Modern fencing did not “move beyond” the need for these things, rather, it stepped outside of them. Once excluded as improper, impolite or just unsafe (regardless of their efficacy), they are no longer proficiently practiced for nor adequately prepared against. As a result, the fencer then gravitates toward a very different, and lesser, understanding of everything from range to timing to effective techniques and martial attitude. When compared to later fencing styles, especially those pursued only as competitive games, these factors alone demonstrate how the earlier methods contained a far greater diversity of action and greater breadth of application. This was obviously a necessity given the more complicated and challenging martial environment they encountered. Though there still remained within later fencing sports key similarities to earlier martial styles, the tools had changed, the nature of practice and teaching had changed, and the motives and goals of the activity itself had changed.”
This alone underscores the profound differences between the pursuit of a post-Renaissance gentlemanly dueling game of single-combat in contrast to the study of an all-inclusive Renaissance martial art. It was certainly never the case that these new fencing styles or swords defeated or evolved beyond older ones. Rather, the military and social environment changed and fencing adapted to different, and narrower, needs. This process can be viewed as “refinement” or “degeneration.”
Anyway, definitely seek out such opportunities, as you will surely learn something.
JC
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