Dmitri Tyurmin
Nic Crespo
Christopher Gray
Luke Reich
Jake Meddaugh
"I always liked big action sports. I love rock climbing, anything that's got a little bit of fear involved.
Fighting is fun but at the same time also very stressful. You don't realize how much your vision changes when those helmets are on."
Christopher Gray
"I have martial arts background and this is a different types of martial arts training for me, because you're fighting multiple opponents and the focus is just staying up. It's a fun sport, right up my alley. Some people like playing basketball, some people like playing baseball. I like riding bicycles. And I like fighting."
Orion Goodman
"When the visor comes down, you already feel tired, you start sweating, overheating. You had already been in armor for minutes before the fight. Energy drains immediately, but then adrenaline does its work. I crave the battle. At the end it energizes me.
Fighting is about getting points, avoiding injury, hitting the opponent. There's no room to think about rent, politics, homework. All higher things take a back seat and for once this, the fight, takes the priority. It's like going to a spa."
Jesse Mooney
"Once you go in on this, it's a lot of money to throw in on a suit. You want to know that you're into this sport before you throw the money in. I knew very, very immediately that I definitely wanted to do this.
I love the community, everybody coming together around the same exact love of hitting each other with metal weapons. There's a diverse range of experience. This is armored MMA, so you have people that have wrestling backgrounds, sword fighting background, muay thai. You kind of never know what you're going to get into. You have to read each person as a very different fighter."
Orlando Mendez
"This is my version of meditation, just getting the tension out. I lost a lot of weight doing this, about 40lbs so my personal weight loss journey is a big part of this as well. I didn't really like exercising, but I enjoy fighting and I just did it all the time.
It's is more than just friendship after a while. These are people you are bleeding and sweating with on the field and it's almost like back in the day, high school wrestling and football and building up the team. You kind of get that back again as an adult. It's a nice feeling, everything is uplifting, it's kind of nice having that in this day and age."
Luke Reich
"I've gotten in a lot of fights before I was on the team and my girlfriend always says this sport is a healthy outlet for my violent instincts. I've had fights with two or three or more dudes trying to kick my ass for real. That's not any fun and I'm not trying to replicate that. I like to fight in a sporting context and I'm going to fight by the rules and I like to fight sword in hand. I like the structure of it. I prefer to fight in a more honorable way. Like man to man, eye to eye, no one coming up behind punch me in the back of your head or wrapping around the throat. I've had too much of that in my life so I'm going to fight, I want to fight looking at the other guy in the eye on the same terms."
CJ Zhang
"A friend showed me an Instagram video about this knights fighting in Central Park and at the moment I saw that, I knew I want to do it. I have a fascination with medieval technology and armor and this is the perfect blend of historical and athleticism.
I like the community, we have people who regularly push us to become better. And the physical benefits from this are absolutely astounding; this is both a hard-hitting combat and conditioning and it has done wonders to my mental health."
Ralph "Tripp" Sommese's mace
Maddie Hartke's polearm
Alex Swanson's polearm
Damion DiGrazia's polearm
Isaac Solomon's polearm
Omar Meghad's polearm
Christopher Gray
Ralph "Tripp" Sommese
Jake Meddaugh
Orlando Mendez
Luke Reich
William Thomas
Garrett Owen
Orion Goodman
Nicolas Yoman
Jesse Mooney
Damion DiGrazia
Alex Swanson
Alex Grille
Omar Meghad
Joseph Yanis
