Jeremy Seguin has won his first professional fight.
But it isn’t boxing, and it’s definitely not a mixed martial art you may be used to watching.
Seguin attended a Montreal Fight League event clad in historically accurate armour for a Knight Fight.
It comes after his years practising something called Buhurt, a full-contact combat sport where fighters are dressed in knight’s armour, and hit themselves with blunt-steel weapons, just like the days of ole.
“It was a special event the league hosted,” said Seguin. “They host a yearly show in Oujé-Bougoumou (a First Nation community in Northern Quebec) and wanted to bring something special. [The promoter] had seen knight fights before and wanted to bring it as part of the event.”
The rest, as they say, is history.
The sport comes with a lot of rules, there are three one-and-a-half-minute rounds, and according to Seguin, rules are the same, give or take, as most martial arts.
“There’s a scoring aspect to it,” he shares. “If you punch, or strike the head with your sword, or the body, it’s two points. The arms are one point, and if the opponent falls, it’s five points.”
But in his debut, Seguin didn’t have to rely on the judges. Only a little way into the first round, he knocked out his opponent with a knee to the head.
He says the experience was a surreal one. Despite practising the sport for a while now, he says it’s different when the big lights come on.
“When you’re behind the helmet, and someone comes at you with an axe or a sword, it’s a different feeling. I’ve done Jiu-Jitsu tournaments before, and it’s a different feeling when you enter this type of battle. It almost feels like a video game. Your field of vision is really narrow, and you can’t rely on your other senses.”
Seguin adds despite how brutal the sport may look, there are a lot of safety protocols in place.
“We have certain gauges for weapons and armour and specifications you have to meet. The equipment is modernized and safer than it was historically, but the exterior still has to be historically correct,” says Seguin. “There’s no risk of getting cut, but there is a risk of broken bones.”
Seguin says despite what it may look like for the viewer, backstage, he thought the other MMA fighters were the ones who had tough fights.
“They would come backstage, bloody and full of bruises. They were batted. We didn’t have a ding on us. There was a lot of mutual respect,” he says.
In terms of what’s next, Seguin says there’s an event coming up in May he’s considering, along with tournaments both here in Canada and in the US.
