Swash-buckling meets Space Age

Sword fighting brings to mind the likes of Zorro and Errol Flynn, clashing blades with fiends with breath-taking speeds, saving the day with only their wits, their trusty steed and, of course, their sharp monstrous blade.

Unfortunately for all you film buffs, the killing aspect has moved to very niche areas of the internet and Germany (where all trends go to die). If D’Artagnan walked into a modern fencing bout, he would be struck at first by how clean the fencers are.

Well, bar some exceptions, nearly all the kit in fencing is as white as our dead foes (in our minds anyway). For the uninitiated, we look like beekeepers who tried to design themselves a streamlined space suit. For the initiated, there are thunderbirds and pirates out there, with the fast action, acts of submission and lift offs with a deadly drone attack. One girl in SU’s club has even watched Pirates of the Caribbean some ungodly number of times.

As you may be able to tell, I am initiated. Therefore, it is left to me to explain to you, the reader, what on earth I am talking about.

With the handy pictures, you can see what we look like, and what we like doing. We like dressing up in clothes that make washing a pain in the neck and hitting each other so we have other pains to think about, in order to score points.

I could begin boring you silly, by explaining whoever gets a light up on the box first, or had attack priority gains the point, or that there are three different blades, or even that we argue over different handles on the swords. But that’s not interesting. If you wanted to know about that, you would be in our Novices Temple, learning how to be a true fencer, and finding yourself to be better behaved than the ‘initiated’.

No, what you want to know is; would I look cool doing it?

Certainly. Fencing as a sport is similar to martial arts and traditional dancing (such as ballet). It celebrates, in a modern fashion, the past. Just as a ballerina celebrates late 19^th Century Russian cultural fragility with The Nutcracker, or the Tae Kwon Do artist shouts special cries for each move, we celebrate our bad ass ancestors. We celebrate every ill thought out duel, whether real or fiction. We celebrate every charge into battle, every clash that brought down a country or a kingdom. But, most of all, we like to think we are those people, fighting for glory (and carrying off female, or male, booty!).

When we train on Fridays and Sundays at silly hours, we do it because it’s amazing. We went to matches in Bristol, Cardiff, Exeter in our quest for that glory.

This is turning a little WoW, but it spells ‘wow’. When you watched the Olympic fencing last year, did you not sense the same thing, found in all sports, and go ‘Wow’?

Want to find out more about fencing? Visit Southampton University Fencing Club‘s facebook page or the official site for British Fencing