Next week: Spartan warrior vs. Ninja. I'm not kidding.

Here's how Imagine it:

Spartan Team: "We will defeat you with our superior discipline"
Ninja Team: silence
Spartan Team: "Maintain formation! ...hey, where did they go?"
Ninja Team: silence
Spartan Team: "No fair! Ref, would you tell those Ninjas to stop sneaking up on us?"

It's also funny how the Viking was not allowed to use arrows, and lost his shield before the final battle.

Nevertheless, I found the show pretty entertaining at a Comic book level (i.e., Who would win in a fight, Superman or the Hulk?). This was Spike TV, not PBS.

Some of the weapon tests, e.g., against forensic dummies, were pretty striking. They should donate their 'lab' to myArmoury when the show is done - now that could lead to some great experiments.

How about the President of the US (ICBMs) vs. the Neanderthal mammoth hunter?

I find this show very entertaining in a 'wow, this is so dumbed down and hilarious, it makes a great sitcom' sort of way. It's Spike humor, so it's expected to be silly.

I fell off my couch laughing when the Apache was *ho hum* walking along through what appears to be the American Southwest and *boom* out pops the Gladiator roaring at him and charging him down. This was right out of a Star Trek Q episode. It was the funniest thing I have seen on TV in years.

I won't jump on the bandwagon and slam the show; because I knew going in it would have absolutely nil value as an educational resource. It's a Spike show; was it supposed to be different or have any real credability to begin with? I am suprised they don't work out someway to throw in the typical Spike cleavage, flatulance, or beer jokes. It is what it is, and I like it in a sort of campy sort of cheesy way... :lol:

While they are at it, I wanna see a three-way cage fight between a ninja, a pirate, and a highlander! :p

Army ant versus ant-eater ....... No. but that would be silly. :p :lol:

Minimum value and I hope not too many people base their ideas about real history on this kind of stuff ? No real harm done to " educated people " but kind of scary to think what the clueless make of this kind of stuff ?

I wonder how much knowledge we take for granted that a lot of people currently don't have a bit of ? Talk about Romans to some people and they won't even have a clue what you are talking about ! Are there people out there who think that we had T.V. 500 years ago and that everything we take for granted in the modern World has always been there ?

I would suggest the AMAZON WARRIOR WOMEN vs ANDY KAUFMAN, the inter-gender wrestling champion of the world.

I find the hype around the tests on the ballistic gel dummies rather amusing, I mean what do you expect to happen when you hit someone in the back of the head with a tomahawk? I could probably reproduce similar results with a brick or a metal pipe. This sentiment rather stems from my envy of not having such an amazing test-cutting material, however.

As far as I can remember, my interest in historical swords started with Star Wars and the old 80's cartoon Masters of the Universe when I was 3 or 4. Not exactly valid sources of historical swordsmanship. Maybe there are a few little fellas who caught this show and now have their interest sparked.....

I guess I'm in a minority here, because I actually liked the show, warts and all. A lot of it is total BS and guesswork, but I liked the whole "CSI-With-Historic-Weapons" thing. Massive damage to many many fake dummies, fight scenes, etc, etc. What I found most amusing was when they listed the Apache club as a "special" weapon. I didn't realize clubs were so unique and special. :lol:

That said, I can't even begin to list their errors and unrealistic experiments, there were so many. Practically every test had issues. I realize anyone watching knows this, but what was with the "He's-wearing-armor-but-we'll-test-without/You-can-only-hit-the-armor", the compelete "I-guess-we'll-just-say-this-is-X-range-because-we-can", "Wow-when-you-hit-someone-with-X-they-get-hurt", and just the random trash-talking? I mean, come on people, this isn't a playground.

So, my little conclusion is: Amusing, but not really valuable except for the afore-mentioned dummy tests.

Figured I'd give this show another chance. This evening I watched the Viking vs Samurai episode.

I'm going to ignore the historical accuracy mistakes entirely because, frankly, they're not really on-topic in my opinion as these types of shows aren't meant to be about historical accuracy. (This includes ignoring "Viking longsword", "ringmail", "diamond-hard sword edge", no padded armour under the mail, two-handed throwing spears, armour weights, unmounted Samurai, one man carrying every type of weapon at the same time, ninjas, etc. etc.)

I have to say that the last part of the show that shows the combat exhibited some of the absolute worst fight chirography I've ever seen anywhere. It was complete garbage and I mean that mainly from the the point of view of entertainment. Looking further and trying to look only as combat, I cringe even more. To look at it as something that might have been seen by the warriors being portrayed would be absurd. Both actors completely failed.

Who are the experts they get for this show? The Viking experts, in particular, weren't well versed in combat techniques (historical or otherwise), arms and armour (their selection wasn't particularly Viking--anyone else notice the double-headed axe with a top spike? what the hell was that?), and they were terrible at trashtalking.

Now, again, I'm not looking for an academic lesson or even a slightly accurate portrayal of history, but given that this is supposed to "test" the two types of warriors, I'd imagine that they'd at least get some of the variables in the right ballpark. Much of what they were putting together as "data" for their end-of-show simulation was completely off-based--far, far, far more than most television shows of this type by miles.

Let me say that this harsh critique comes from a guy (me!) who generally enjoys a lot of these types of shows found on the History Channel, Discovery Channel, etc. I've always argued the point of view that viewers have to let go and enjoy these types of shows for what they are--entertainment. I consider even the ones that are trying to be educational (which this one really isn't attempting to do, in my opinion) only attempting to do it in the most basic, basic ways--and that's fine because television is a medium of entertainment. I'm also a viewer of Spike TV and a huge MMA fan, for what that's worth, and yet this show leaves me completely flat.

I still have to repeat that this show was not at all entertaining to me. The format isn't particularly well done, the fighting technique is terrible, and the idea of running simulations based on the extremely limited amount of data is just an absurd concept to me.

*facepalm* http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1281313/episodes

episode 4.... Pirate vs. Knight... what the>? That has to be the worst match up in the entire season. I have not watched them yet. But come on did these guys smoke crack and then write warrior class names on little pieces of paper and throw them in a hat and pull them out two at a time.

I vote we as a communtiy, put together a true program to historical accuracy and compare the knight vs. samuri!

This "show" is such ammount of male cow manure I can't even start to place it togeather - they take some more or less fantasy elements out of each culture and then somehow try to weight them against eachother using pseudoscientific talk and pretense. Complete and utter crap, IMO. Sure it is fun to see someone smashing up ballistic gel dummies... but it serve absolutely zero purpose.

The only thing that lure me in the show was that jello ballistic man. I wanna try cutting it with my swords. :D Other than that, I looked at it with no expectation and just wanna see how they messed up the data with that conclusion video at the last part. LOL~! How could Viking won almost all the way on data and lost the fight that way? LOL!