Under a blue sky in Central Park, a crowd has gathered. In front of them are men and women covered in armor, wielding steel weapons that clang and crash as the knights strike each other. The fighters in this bout are Luke, the Red Knight of Brooklyn, and Orlando, The Magic Knight. Their plate armor is heavy. Their weapons are real. Luke takes a vicious body blow from Orlando’s mace, just as Luke forgoes his two-handed sword and opts to punch Orlando square in his face. These two are among a cadre of noble brawlers belonging to the New York City group, Gladiators NYC.

The fight goes on like this: blow for blow, clang for clang, all to the roars and groans of the crowd. Luke catches Orlando across the shoulder with his sword. Orlando gets a full swing of his mace with connects with Luke’s face plate. After sixty brutal seconds, the round ends.

This is a public display of medieval battle that Gladiators NYC puts on every Saturday, when the weather is nice. On other occasions, they might fight at The Ground in the Lower East Side. In the winter, they host public fights in the back lot of the Bronx Brewery in Hunts Point, brawling on parking lot concrete. As the green returns, they take to Central Park, in a natural arena just south of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, a Saturday afternoon spot they hold for the rest of the summer.

Founded in 2019, just months before COVID, the group is made up of armored fighting enthusiasts, martial artists, former athletes, veterans, and students of history who wanted to know what it’s really like to don the armor of old and swing a greatsword. They are among a few dozen similar clubs and organizations around the country, from California to Texas to South Carolina. Their founder, longtime and award-winning fighter Damion DiGrazia, created Manhattan’s own iteration. “I wanted to make a team kick ass in New York,” he says.

Back to the fighting. Before the next Central Park battle begins, there is a sudden controversy between the two fighters. Orlando thinks his mace is doing too much damage to Luke. “I hit you too many times in the face, man!” He asks to use a mace but is worried about the quality of it. Luke is hurriedly pacing and fuming. “Orlando, it’s fine! It’s not rusty. You can hit me in the head with it. Let’s go!”

The referee, middle-aged, rangy, white-haired and clad in a kilt-and-aviator sunglasses combo, addresses the crowd: “This ain’t no Medieval Times! This is the real thing! The steel fightin’ game!”

Luke and Orlando live for these fights. “It’s belligerence,” Luke says. “Pressing forward into a fight. Just fuckin’ leanin’ into to other guy and not letting go.” What else would you expect from the guy who practices on a human-shaped fighting dummy in the courtyard of his apartment at 2 a.m. by moonlight to better improve his low-light vision? “When you’re wearing a helmet, you can’t see shit, you can’t hear shit,” he says. “You’re basically in the dark all the time.”

“I love this game, man,” Orlando says passionately. He saw a demonstration of the sport at a renaissance fair and was hooked. A magician by trade, he has been fighting for ten years in various organizations and teams, and was among the very first of Gladiators NYC, joining in his mid-twenties. “It was real! I loved it!” Since then, he has gone about as hard as a person can go for the sport. “At practice, every day, I threw up. Every day. That’s how hard I’d go.”

The game they love is called buhurt. The name comes from an old French word meaning “to wallop.” The sport dates back to 12th-century Europe when nobles and knights would spar in heavy plate armor to entertain, attain glory, and practice for war. Eight hundred years later, practitioners still fight for glory and to show off in front of a crowd, even if medieval warfare isn’t around anymore.

Now, they get those arms and armor from sellers foreign and domestic, from custom blacksmiths, independent armorers and forges that exist solely for the niche athletes. A decent suit of armor is around $1,800. A good suit of armor might run you $3000.

Christopher Gray, a delivery driver from Flushing, says the armor actually makes the sport safer than other contact sports. That being said, the 36-year-old has had his teeth cracked, a hematoma to his left thigh, and uncountable cuts, scrapes, and bruises. “The danger is appealing,” he says. “You get hit with axes, you’re gonna feel it. You can get knocked out, too.” He’s seen it happen before. One Gladiator took a poleaxe to the back of the head during a fight at a tournament. The blow was so severe that it broke the fighter’s helmet and rendered him unconscious.

“The danger doesn’t worry me. I get to fight and not go to jail,” he says sincerely. “I can inflict harm, and harm can be inflicted on me. That’s just part of it.”

Sophia Rigg, a Texas-born fighter in her early 30s, likes being referred to as a “femme fighter.” Her friends and family don’t understand why she fights. “Well, it’s fun,” she says cheerily. “It’s so fun and happy to hit someone in the head with an axe!” Her first time fighting in armor is not a glowing review of the sport. She barely survived her first punishing battle. “This is great, but it sucks,” she remembers thinking. Sophia has been more connected to the community since being at Gladiators NYC. It fulfills her need for a friend group. “You can’t have the experience of fighting in armor without the good community to back it up,” she says. For Sophia, beating up her friends means further embedding herself in a group that enjoys the art of medieval combat.

On the other hand, Luke finds solace in the swatting. He was an angry kid, always getting into fights and unable to harness his anger in any productive way. “Getting into a lot of fights will make you a good fighter, but only if you learn from those fights.” He took to the sport quickly when he found Gladiators NYC five years ago. It gave him the control and discipline he needed. But it wasn’t therapy. “That’s unfair to your sparring partners when you’re comin’ in with a lot of extra baggage.” His constant anger and need for violence were not reasons for him to fight. “I’m going in [to the sport] because I enjoy fighting,” even when his nose is split open by part of his helmet caving in on his face from a sword blow.

He takes none of the anger and difficulties of his life into the ring. “You’re gonna fight out of anger instead of fighting to improve.” If Luke’s upset, he can actually hurt someone. He’s supposed to fight them, not hurt them. Fighting out of anger, Luke says, is not the mark of a good fighter. Fighting angry will burn a person out. Instead, he prefers to fight his friends, as they wish to fight him, with “a positive capability for violence.”

Whether fighting for belonging, healing, hobby, or tradition, each fighter of Gladiators NYC sorts something out by way of beating one another. In the same way, people find peace in the art of Tai Chi or Jiu Jitsu, medieval warfare provides a select few with metaphorical armor for life.