Sgt_Gath
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- Jul 25, 2014
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UWM - Unified Weapons Master: Gladiator duels with carbon-fiber suits | Digital Trends
I'm skeptical that this could ever be made truly safe, or that they will be able to successfully market it to mass audiences.
If they ever do, however, count me in! This sport could be like MMA on crack!
Imagine for a moment what itād be like if we resurrected gladiator fights in the modern day.
Not that American Gladiator, bodybuilders-shooting-tennis-balls-at-substitute-gym-teachers nonsense either. Iām talking proper Roman gladiator fights. Full contact, no-holds-barred, Russel-Crowe-style deathmatches broadcast on national TV.
Fat chance, right? The world we live in is much more civilized than the one the Romans inhabited, and that kind of brutality just isnāt considered a valid form of entertainment anymore. Nobody would stand for it.
āOur objective is to promote a new global combat sport, with weapons.ā
But what if you took out the whole human slaughter part out of the equation? Imagine if you could toss two trained fighters into a ring, give them whatever weapons they want, and and let them go full-on Spartacus on each other without anyone getting seriously injured. With the death element removed, even the most die-hard pacifists would have to admit that itād be pretty damn entertaining.
In a nutshell, thatās exactly what Australian startup Unified Weapons Master wants to do. The companyās founders are on a mission to bring back weapons-based fighting, and have spent the last few years developing a way for weapons-based martial artists to fight without eviscerating each other in the process.
āFor us itās about honoring, preserving, and reigniting interest in weapons-based martial arts ā arts that have sort of slowly drifted off of peopleās radar since the invention of gunpowder and projectile weapons,ā explains UWM co-founder and CEO David Pysden. āSince then, thereās been no forum in which to see weapons-based marital arts practiced, and we want to change that.ā
UWM Lorica Gold and Lorica Red actionāOur objective,ā he says, āis to promote a new global combat sport with weapons. So the unified in Unified Weapons Master is about bringing all the different weapons arts from all around the world together in a single competition. Thereās roughly 300 distinct martial arts practiced around the world, and of those styles, 96 of them are either entirely weapons-based, or have a significant amount of weapons-based training in their curriculum. What we want to do is bring all of those styles together in a competition, much like UFC did with mixed martial arts.ā
The only problem is that, barring all-out death matches, thereās really no way for weapons based martial artists to really test their skills. When youāre practicing with, say, a battle axe or a katana, you canāt actually follow through on the last shot because thereās a pretty good chance youāll murder your opponent.
So how exactly do you facilitate a weapons fight without actually killing anybody? In a word: technology.
I'm skeptical that this could ever be made truly safe, or that they will be able to successfully market it to mass audiences.
If they ever do, however, count me in! This sport could be like MMA on crack!