THere’s this film, which is about 90% people standing around or arriving:
In the book 'Duelling with Sword and Pistol" there is a picture of two duellists facing off. Given the nature of the two being publicity hounds and the cameras of 1904 it is unknown if this was a posed photo the pair took .
the Philippines? no kidding i don’t see any swordfigthings here. and protesters here don’t bring swords with them. they bring placards. XD
I’ll also note that among the super hardcore historical fencing folks, “duels” are sometimes fought with no masks, no protective gear, limited clothing, and even “semi-sharp” foils or epees.
I think they’re silly and ignorant for doing such - it would be a goddamn shame to return to the world of reality with one of your eyes popped out like a cocktail onion.
They removed the tip protectors before they fought.
One interesting feature of real ‘modern’ sword duels is that by the time there were photographs & film, there was also an almost painful awareness of germ theory. In one duel, the blades were sanitized, and if the blade touched the ground, the body of the swordsman, or anything other than air or the other person’s blade they would re-sanitize it. They were more fearful of infection than a sword wound. Perhaps rightly so!
One that has not been mentioned that I have some pictures of is in “The Secret History of the Sword” by J. Christoph Amberger. A duel between gold medalest fencer Aldo Nadi and newspaper sports writer Adolfo Contronei in 1924. I couldn’t find these pictures online, and these are poor, so I haven’t scanned them from the book. It is mostly a discussion of the difference betwen sport fencing and real duels, and the pictures show the master fencer in terrible form, clearly stressed by the risk involved.
I did find his account of the duel here:
http://www.calpoly.edu/~dkgrant/fencing/nadi.htm
he does mention sterilzing the blades before the start.
Yeah, they happen a lot in the Dominican Republic.
Check it out:
http://www.danieldimarzio.com/dominicanswordduels.htm
The Dominican martial arts use mainly a machete too. But the duels on that webpage are real…modern day warriors man.
I think there’s going to be a big fat difference between a some street brawl between a couple of third world youths hacking at each other with machetes, and two expert swordsmen in the middle ages or renaissance. Or even between that and the types of sword duels (outside of military conflicts) you’d see in the late 18th/19th centuries.
Unfortunately, no film survived the spanish Inquisition’s wrath.
The closest you’re going to get to seeing what sword combat actually looked liked in a time when swords were still implements of war and self defense, with a long tradition of martial training is by looking at modern European Martial Artists. Not, SCA, not stage combat, not re-enactors.
Stuff like this:
Unless what you WANT is film of your average street thug slicing at one another. That shouldn’t be too hard to find in third world countries probably done with machetes or large knifes.
I HAVE seen pictures of the aftermath of a sword fight though. There are some pictures of dead/dying soldiers in Japan when the Samurai was fighting back vs the Emperor and western influences (think Tom Cruise dances with Samurais). Not pretty 
Ok, I guess there might be another way to experience genuine sword fights, thanks to the miracle of modern engineering:
But there are plenty of documented knife fights captured on film. Here’s one. 
The narration says : “The offended : Mr. René Ribière, député (NdT : that’d be Congressman for you Yanks) for the Val d’Oise, insulted during the course of a heated debate at the National Assembly and demanding satisfaction. The offender : Mr. Gaston Deferre, Socialist député and Mayor of Marseilles”.
It further notes that Mr. Ribière had already won a pistol duel against *another *député some time prior, while Mr. Deferre had never fought before. The latter got hit in the forearm early on, which would have been enough as they had agreed to fight to first blood only but he insisted on having another go at it - albeit still not to the death because he was getting married on the day after.
Politics sounded a lot more fun back then :(.
I thought a few of the guys looked like they had skills. For example the one guy fighting with a stick and a machete where the big guy breaks them up. If you watch close the big guy gets cut. Any which way looked like the dude had some skills. Then there is this, they look like some of them train:
A lot of the vids of the fighting did look like crazy people going at it but then I read there is a long history of the machete being used in war there, like against the Spanish occupation etc. Cubans used it effectively. So might be a tradition in there. Either way, it would be interesting seeing different sword styles fight. I bet no matter what the style it would look nuts and most techniques would fly out the window. Aint like a fistfight, one wrong move and your toast. I do think the use of the sword in Europe gets overlooked too…the samurai were awesome but Europe had to have some great info about techniques that were lost.
I’m not familiar with the culture, so it’s possible that there is a tradition there, but it seems a lot like wild swinging to me. No sense of timing and distance. At the same time, it looks like they aren’t using protective gear, so that changes up the equation, unless they were trying to actually kill each other.
Even there is a tradition, I’m not sure street youths would necessarily be representative of actual martial skill with such weapons, and definitely not the type of skill someone like a medieval veteran knight would posses.
I always hear that tactics or techniques would fly out the window in a “Real” fight. That is not something that appears to be true, based on texts that we have form the period or contemporary accounts of combat. It’s usually only said by people who have minor experience with some modern martial arts, many of which are geared towards competitive sports, and not actual self-defense.
People see TaeKwon-do in the olympics and they figure - well, that wouldn’t work in a real fight! True. Those techniques are about obeying a certain rule set and scoring points. Not about disabling/killing your opponent. That doesn’t mean other, more effective martial arts aren’t about proper use of techniques in order to do actual damage.
Similarly, just because street thugs who engage in shootouts were they empty entire clips and don’t hit anyone because they were holding their guns sideways, doesn’t mean that highly skilled SEAL teams act in the same way when engaging the enemy. Techniques they’ve learned are used because they are effective. If they weren’t effective they would not be used and therefore, never taught in the first place.
Wild swings with a sword would only get you killed as they are wasteful movements that can be out timed, may be ineffective, and can be easily countered.
It’s true that Samurai’s tend to get all the attention when it comes to their martial ability, and it’s also true that the warrior classes in Europe during the medieval and renaissance period would have certainly been just as skilled. And we do in fact have some of the writings and treatises on weapons of the time from medieval and renaissance masters.
I find it interesting that you consider a video game a better example than full speed full contact reenactment like SCA. Why is that?
another clip with some fairly good SCA examples
