Re: (TFT) Polyhedral Weapon Heresy

[raito@raito.com]

It's just an opinion of modern fencing in general. Right of way originally
had to do with the fact that if you were using sharps, you had to parry,
because just hitting the other guy first wasn't enough -- he'd probably
run you through anyway. These days, not only does the attack have to be
barely existant, so does the parry. And it seems to be very, very rare to
see any parries at all in sabre. But understand that part of the reason I
moved to epee was that I had trouble with right of way. But then, I pretty
rarely got struck when I made a point with epee, maybe 10% of the time.

I also find it quite nauseating to see every single modern fencer pumping
their fist in an effort to sway the judges. It lacks class.

I'm of the opinion that any combat-like sport MUST compromise in its
rules, otherwise it ends up deadly. But the unfortunate and inescapable
side-effect of rules is that it becomes possible to excel in that sport
doing things one would not do in an actual combat. So you end up with
technicians tuned very specifically to a particular set of rules. And for
a pure sportsman, that's fine. But as a martial artist, that's not what I
want. As a fencer, it's always been about what would happen with sharps
for me.

And that's true of even the sporting systesms I play in. The SCA's
compromises make it so there's a low barrier to entry, and
weight/height/reach make less of a difference. But it also makes for
combat that has been characterized as 'fat men hitting each other on the
butt' (the combats can move far closer than a medieval fight would get
without grappling). TKD in the early 80's didn't allow punches to the
face, and didn't score kicks to the legs. Etc., etc., etc.

Modern fencing as it exists today is not for me anymore. And it appears as
though most of the training out there is oriented towards the sport of
modern fencing, rather than swordsmanship. In one sense, it's good,
because the US has had some Olypmic contenders recently, and so interest
is up. But current modern fencing seems to bear the same relation to
swordsmanship that most TKD classes bore to an actual unarmed encounter in
the early 80's. Which is to say none.

If you want to hear one of my good rants, how about the emasculation of
the Modern Pentathlon?

Neil Gilmore
raito@raito.com

> You are the second person I've heard that opinion of current foil from.
>  The first told me I should get back in despite a 25 year lapse because of
> who I had learned from.  While I stayed with just the classes offered at
> SJSU back in the mid 80s, those classes were taught by Gay and Michael
> D'Asaro.  That level of traditional foil is apparently very rare now.
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