NYC's gladiatorial combat scene is growing, so I took a swing at it

On a recent Tuesday I took the 1 train up to 133rd Street to experience an increasingly popular pastime for New Yorkers: armored fighting.

The ancient form of entertainment has fallen out of the mainstream over the centuries but has regained some traction internationally this millennia — less for reenactments than for, essentially, professional-level bar brawls in chainmail.

To get a taste of this violent team sport, I attended a meetup of Santa’s Knights, a nonprofit organization that runs free weekly fitness classes that are functionally gladiator bootcamp at Harlem’s Manhattanville Community Center.

Around 20 people were in the gym the evening I attended. The week prior, the organization said it had held its first women’s class and had some 40 people show up.

“It's just getting bigger and bigger,” Damion DiGrazia, who founded Santa’s Knights in 2016, said.

The two-hour course starts like any other workout course — with stretching — then gets more specific as attendees learn the basics of using a sword.

Beyond the main group, more advanced gladiators practice with each other elsewhere in the gym.

“Little lower ... better,” Shannon Lindley told a more junior fighter wielding a sword around 10 feet from the newbies. Lindley has been practicing armed combat for around six years.

Those who enjoy the course and find themselves passionate about the sport can work at it until they’re ready to participate in events put on by Gladiators NYC where combatants duel one another in full armor.

Armor is an ordeal to practice in, and requires significant prep. It was not used at the class I attended but the instructors bring this out for duel practice with advanced team members.

“It’s full-contact MMA [mixed martial arts] with steel weapons and group fighting,” said DiGrazia, who also started Gladiators NYC in 2013.

In addition to the free weekly classes, the group puts on sanctioned public fights in Central Park and hosts duels in various local spaces, from Chinatown soccer fields to the Bronx Brewery to a West Village TV studio.

To date, most of what Gladiators has done has been free of charge, but with interest now proven, DiGrazia recently started the Armored League, through which he puts on paid events. Its slogan is “real steel, real fighting, real damage."

The Armored League staged a tournament at New Jersey’s American Dream mall in May. On July 31, the league will pit eight fighters against each other in a tournament at Long Island City’s Melrose Ballroom.

Contestants brandish swords and compete against each other in full armor. No horses are involved.

The team sport really is very violent — basically a free-for-all with limited rules, all while competitors are clad in armor.

“We’re trying to replicate the UFC [Ultimate Fighting Championship] kind of experience. You’re going to Fight Night, and there’s weapons involved,” Orlando Mendez, another founding Gladiators NYC member, said. “We’re in front of you getting bloodied and bruised for you.”

Many fighters are looking for a positive way to channel their “inherent bloodlust,” as early member Luke Reich put it.

“I love hitting people. I love fighting,” Reich said. “It's good to have a healthy outlet for those things, to not be doing it in the street or in bars or at punk shows or anything like that.”

Lindley described the sport’s main demographic as people who “happen to exist in an intersection of, like, playing Dungeons and Dragons and liking football.” Also: veterans.

In an age of social isolation, DiGrazia, who is a fourth-generation New Yorker, said he sees popularizing the sport as his mission.

“I'm ex-military and I got heavily injured while I was in. And so when I came out I was just a mess," he said, "Fitness and sports really saved my life. ... I'm just so proud we're becoming a real New York thing.”

Leaving the gym that Tuesday, I was struck by the kindness and camaraderie the instructors, first-timers and more advanced competitors showed each other. Even while channeling their bloodlust and wielding swords, the class's energy felt inclusive.