Armored Wrestling
By Jason Heller
Wrestling in armor was a brutal necessity for any well trained knight. It was often overlooked as the years progressed and more ritualistic sport combat was introduced into society. Wrestling techniques were documented by masters hoping to pass their knowledge along to future generations. For any contemporary of the great masters of the medieval period the knowledge of wrestling was absolutely crucial.
Wrestling was a brutal form of combat that encouraged taking advantage of your opponent by any means necessary in order to win a fight and stay alive. It is apparent that wrestling was accepted by all masters of weapons as essential to combat. It gave a distinct advantage to those who possessed it and the masters taught their savage techniques throughout the age. With wrestling a warrior could use himself as the weapon, which truly would have been an advantage if all others were lost.
Wrestling in armor was not as difficult as one might imagine. The weight of the armor was not a concern as it was distributed evenly over the body. There was nearly free articulation of the joints allowing for excellent ease of movement. As a result of the free movement offered by the armor it offered nearly no protection against breaking techniques on fingers or joints. The only real detriment the armor offered was the intense heat one would suffer while wearing it.
The techniques described in this paper were meticulously detailed in fechtbucher or fighting books. The masters that wrote these pieces struggled with the task of trying to accurately represent complex movement with long pages of text and drawings. The works fall between two extremes with the Starhemberg work containing almost no pictures at all and others relying almost entirely on the skill of the artist to convey their meaning. Nearly all masters agreed that the manuscripts were meant only as a memory aid and could not alone teach the complexities of the moves contained therein.
During
wrestling the practitioner would seek to disable their opponent in any way
available, including, arm breaks, finger breaks, eye gouges, groin attacks, hip
tosses, leg trips, various pins, and other tricks to win the advantage. The main goals were to either bring as much
pain on an enemy as possible, or to secure one’s weight on top of him so that
one could gain dominance and then kill with a dagger.