Okay. Historical elitism aside, I thought this was a great show. Just watched the tournament finale on the TiVo. The more I watched it, the more I could see that there was a lot of strategy and technique demonstrated. Those are some tough dudes. Yeah, they're bashing each other. But they're doing it with some style.
The last episode took the 7 winners of each episode. They were all wearing their own kit, and choice of weapons. Some had small bucklers and shorter swords or maces. Others had two handed weapons with greater reach. It was really all over the board.
The first round was a "grand melee" 3 minute long. Everyone against everyone else. They ended up ganging up on the most inexperienced fighter, and he was the first to be eliminated. They then paired up the remaining six fighters into three teams. These guys really worked well together. They had different strategies. For example, one effective strategy was bait opponents into following you, so that their back was to your teammate, who would charge in and just lay the other guy out.
A team was eliminated, and they were down to two teams, and then finally, the winning team dueled each other for the championship.
As others have said, this probably isn't historically accurate (though just saying it with confidence doesn't necessarily make it so), I thought it was a really fun show.
