History Channel has ventured into the world of reality competition shows, and thus far, they’ve all been a lot of fun. Forged in Fire has weaponeers forging their own weapons. Knife or Death–hosted by WWE Hall of Famer Goldberg–puts bladesmith’s weapons through a rigerous gauntlet to test its durability. And now, Knight Fight–hosted by WWE’s Jay “Christian” Reso–has competitors in full armor fighting each other with actual weapons.
On the surface, the idea of armored warriors fighting each other is exceptionally appealing, until you start asking yourself, “How do they do this without killing each other?” According to one of the show’s judges and host, Reso, it’s all pretty safe. “Most of them are from a league called, The Armor Combat League,” Reso told GameSpot. “And they do have their own armor that they feel comfortable in and they do have a tendency to lean towards certain weapons, like all the weapons that are used in the show itself, are blunted, but they’re full size, scale, everything of the originals.”
The show itself seems like a crazy idea, but even considering everything is about as safe as you can make it, Knight Fight is still a wild concept for a series. The first promo for the show, which you can see below, lean heavy towards non-stop action.
“It’s got a little bit of everything in it,” continued Reso. “Action and obviously, with the interviews and stuff that we do with the Knights themselves, the competitors. Their personalities shine through in that, of course you have different personalities and different sized of each competitor, which also makes it interesting.”
While these real-life knights are beating the hell out of each other in battle, one thing Reso found compelling was how they treated each other after each round. “The thing was the camaraderie to me that the guys had. I mean, they’re in there dealing out punishment and taking punishment, in between rounds they’re kind of shouting over to one each other from across the ring asking, as in, ‘Hey, good round?’ or, ‘You okay?’ or things like that. The sportsmanship, the camaraderie is what kind of, like you said, the brutality of it and the action and how much each competitor wanted to win, but at the end of it, they were all shaking hands, patting each other on the back and making sure they were all right.”
The winners will combat each other every week until there’s only one knight standing for the season finale, and they’ll go home with $10,000 and a championship belt. You can watch the madness unfold for yourself when Knight Fight comes to History Channel on Wednesday, January 23 at 10 PM ET / PT.