[Bill Grandy]

At WMAW 2011, Roland Warzecha, Jake Norwood and I did a little bit of fencing with the messer, and Tim Hall recorded some of it (some of it wasn't recorded, and some of the recording was corrupted, unfortunately). The footage sat around forgotten for awhile, but Tim remembered he had it and gave me a copy. I decided to put it up on YouTube with some slow-motion replays and commentary (mostly for my own analysis and betterment, but also to help clarify actions to people who weren't there).

Jake and Roland are fantastic fencers. I'd bouted a little bit with Jake before, so I already knew he was quite the swordsman, but this was the first time Roland and I had crossed blades. He and I started out initially with some "slow motion" fencing with sword and buckler for the sake of technique training (and if you haven't seen Roland fence sword and buckler, it's poetry in motion at any speed). When Jake came along, we switched to messer and sped things up a bit, and that's what you see in these vids.

I'm quite happy with these bouts because Jake and Roland possess a high technical proficiency where one has to really understand fühlen, distance and timing in order to fence against them. Rushing in and hoping to get the first hit doesn't work with these guys. There are some really great examples duplieren, mutieren, and general winding goodness.

Jake and I (and the video evidence that Jake pulled off plate 60 from Codex Wallerstein):
http://youtu.be/aZCeI5t3F-w

Roland and I (this is missing the most footage of them all):
http://youtu.be/XfUG97lYkEA

Roland and Jake:
http://youtu.be/FkQO0kT4SZA

[Michal Plezia]

Great videos. Thanks for sharing.

[Randall Moffett]

Bill,

Looks like a great deal of fun. Tell Jake hello for me.

I love the sound of the swords in slow motion when they collide.

RPM

[Roger Hooper]

Look Here for some discussion about the A&A Practice Messers used in these videos.