Duels with mismatched weapons

What historical records are there about duels with mismatched (melee) weapons?

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psychologytoday.com/blog/canine-corner/201008/murder-and-dog-seeking-justice-600-year-old-tale-the-human-canine-bond
hema-florentia.it/tournaments/
youtube.com/watch?v=DtagAN-Wtz8
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_gladiator_types
youtube.com/watch?v=MvmLQ_Jjqmk
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Prolly in Melees in tournaments.

Hence "choose your weapon"

Man vs. dog

psychologytoday.com/blog/canine-corner/201008/murder-and-dog-seeking-justice-600-year-old-tale-the-human-canine-bond

Historically there was no restrictions on what weapon you could bring to a japanese duel.

Bokuden beat a naginata wielder with a nodachi by cutting through the shaft of the weapon. Muso Genosuke allegedly took on Musashi with a short staff, and won.

Donald McBane fought Andrew O'Bryan armed with a falchion, while O'Bryan had a traditional Irish longsword. Both weapons were considered very old-fashioned and they were apparently both a bit eccentric.

McBane ended up breaking O'Bryan's arm so he must have been doing something right.

Bump, great thead

Fuck yeah that a badass dog bro

The boring part of HEMA is that the focus is so much on fights with similar weapons, or at least it is in the treatises.

based doggo

Do something against it, go to Italy and enjoy a relaxed HEMA multi weapons random tournament.
>hema-florentia.it/tournaments/

The boring part of HEMA is they think all of military history pre guns revolves around the 15th and 16th centuries. Romans, Phalanx? What the fuck is that?

Bane ?

holy fuck

Thats because the only treatises we have are from around the 15th onwards.

in traditional finnish duel there's a phase called "miekan mittelö" or "test of swords" in english. there the contenders first compare their swords and the one who has the longer blade hits first. in the duel between huge karelian warrior Pohto and tavastian chief Matti Kurki the Pohto cheated and when he saw that his sword was shorter he quickly slashed Matti's hand off, looked at him holding his arm and jumping in agony with one leg, laughed and said that Matti was jumping around like a crane. then Matti said he could also fly like a crane, took a sword in his left hand, jumped on Pohto and hit his head off with a single slash. "kurki" also means crane and he got his name from this fight.

There is a famous duel described by Talhoffer between a man and a woman. The man is in a pit with a mace, the woman is around the pit with a flail (a rock in a sock really).

McBane, swordsman extraordinaire and pimp.

>and won

HISTORICAL European martial arts. That's means based on treatises not just speculation. They have to rely on actual manuals which are mostly Renaissance era

Well there is a third party account of the duel, but its only one source that I know of and Its not universally accepted.

What is known is that Muso Gennosuke had at least one duel with Musashi in which he lost, afterwords he withdrew to a temple and developed a new system for the short staff which survives today as shinto muso ryu.

Afterwards it said he challenged Musashi to a rematch and won.

The upper levels of the curriculum have methods for using a short staff against two swords which may or may not be related to those encounters

youtube.com/watch?v=DtagAN-Wtz8

Gladiator fights were full of that:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_gladiator_types

Yes though gladiator fighting systems were very much about putting on a good show as much as being effective

I'm sure the gladiators themselves were pretty motivated to be effective.

Well yes but the various combinations were meant to be entertaining, as well as supposedly imitating Rome's ancient enemies

>armed man loses fight to dog

Jesus christ he deserved to be executed even if he wasn't guilty.

During the odd fight to the death maybe. They were rather rare tho, gladiators are expensive afterall.

I'd stay in that hole willingly for all of about .3 second

The story is that the judge wanted to make the duel "fair" and thus mandated that the man had to stay in the hole but got the better weapon.

>bigass dog
>only armed with a stick
Dogs have been bred to kill men, it's not as easy to kill a big dog as you seem to think

Right, because if it's just about getting stabbed a bit who cares amirite?

You can slice various parts of the human body without much danger

Most sword cuts were in fact not fatal. and the Romans had competent surgeons. Gladiator fight rarely ended with the death of one of the participants

No shit. And boxers rarely die in the ring too, but they still want to win.

but like Boxing there were rules in a gladiator fight, and a finishing blow was rarely dealt. the match was ended before that. The loser would usually be sown up and live to fight again

Why so hostile? He's pointing out that gladiators didn't die as often as people think

surely there's a thing or two on gladiatorial combat, we at least know how Gladiuses were used.

...not sure how you'd even begin to do it safely even with wooden ones since it's bone-breaking thrusts on naked chests, but that's that.

Unfortunately I don't think there really is. I'm not opposed to people reconstructing the art, but it would not technically be HEMA as it does not use specific treatises

youtube.com/watch?v=MvmLQ_Jjqmk

they weren't supposed to be effective. most of the time they were actually trying hard to NOT to kill their opponent and yet spill some blood. the shit was staged man.

Maybe you just go to shit places. If you're in a fun comp it's cool as long as people agree.

He was the King's bodyguard.

You realize that more of them were slaves and prisoners, right? They took orders and put on a show because if they didn't they could be executed.

They weren't whatever fantasy you've cooked up

More merit for that based dog.
Dont you understand? That dog was fueled by justice and revenge!

It should be considered that there's a big difference between a 'duel' and a 'judicial combat'.

The judicial combat did not serve the purpose of restoring honour or something but it served the purpose of determining the truth, e.g. if there was no other way to determine who was lying. In order for that to happen, the two fighters had to be roughly equal in all regards, so that it wouldn't be their personal skill to determine the outcome but the grace of god which was assumed to be with the one who speaks the truth. This equality was usually achieved by arming the two people in the same way. In the case of the woman against her husband they probably saw that she was weaker than him and less experienced in fighting so they had to give him a handicap in order to make the fight more equal. It was not uncommon for women to have professional fighters take their place (called 'campione' or 'champion'); however, their services were costly, especially since they were in for the punishment too in case they were defeated since they essentially "lied" as well by vouching for a liar. So in this case the woman probably couldn't afford the services of such a fighter or she couldn't find one. Given the humiliating position of the two, it is likely that they weren't all too important people.

Many fencing masters, e.g. Hans Talhoffer himself, fought as champions before; practical experience was part of their reputation which gave them access to the courts of nobility in order to be hired as courtly fencing masters.