Last week, Moscow once again became the center of attention for the historical medieval battle community: the capital hosted the final stages of the international championship “Sword of Russia.” The tournament became one of the largest platforms of the season — more than two hundred fighters from Russia, France, Italy and Serbia took the arena in full armor, demonstrating how modern sport can coexist with the reconstruction of historical combat traditions.
If ten or fifteen years ago such fights resembled performances by enthusiasts without a unified standard, today HMB is a discipline with a strict set of rules, judging criteria and a clear scoring system, making the bouts comparable to any other full-contact sport. This is why spectators can easily follow the dynamics of a clash and track its progress almost in real time.
The tournament program was designed to showcase the diversity of formats. The “five versus five” team fights traditionally drew significant attention thanks to their speed and tight group coordination. In the men’s “twelve versus twelve” battles, the focus shifts to endurance and the ability of a group to function as a single unit. The audience especially warmly received the performances of Marina Golovina — a two-time world champion — and Dmitry Kunchenko, captain of the national team and one of the most renowned fighters in the discipline.
Beyond the sporting component, the tournament also became a venue for discussing equipment. Participants emphasized that HMB armor is not theatrical costuming but gear weighing around 25 kilograms, fully compliant with historical prototypes and simultaneously built for serious physical strain. The Russian national team remains the strongest in the world: over the past decade it has not once relinquished the championship title, and the discipline itself has received official recognition in the sports registries of Monaco and New Zealand.
An interesting comment was also offered by Evgeny Strzhalkovsky, founder of the Bern club, who noted that modern armor sets for Russian athletes are produced domestically. According to him, craftsmen rely on European historical prototypes but create equipment adapted to the intensity of tournaments. “These are armor sets developed by Russian masters based on European models,” he stressed. Strzhalkovsky also added that it is precisely the balance between authenticity, safety and competent design that allows fighters to perform at a high level in bouts of international scale.
According to participants, such tournaments are not only competitive arenas but also places where standards for future seasons are shaped — from rules to technological solutions in equipment. This is what makes HMB one of the most dynamically developing sports directions of recent years.
