Review: Knights of Mayhem

Note: Printed in the Marshall Independent TV Guide

What you first see when you tune into “Knights of Mayhem,” a new reality show on of all places the National Geographic Channel, appears to be a bunch of smack-talking, foul-mouthed rednecks with egos bigger than their outsized selves. Then you see them in 130 pounds of plate armor mounted on 2,000-plus pound horses, charging at each other with 11-foot wooden poles at 30 miles per hour.

What they’re doing is called “jousting” which was what men did in the Late Middle Ages instead of football.

Jousting originated as a combat sport for mounted knights in the High Middle Ages. By the 15th and 16th centuries it had evolved pretty far from its martial origins, using specially designed jousting armor much heavier and less articulated than armor for warfare.

This by the way, is what led to the popular misconception that a knight unhorsed and lying on the ground could not get up due to the weight of his armor.

The death of King Henry II of France in a joust in 1559 is generally held to mark the end of jousting as a sport. Since then there have been periodic revivals, mostly of what is called “theatrical jousting,” where the joust is carefully choreographed with a pre-determined “winner.”
This isn’t that. These guys in the Ultimate Jousting Championship engage in the real thing, breaking lances on each other’s armor and trying to knock them off their horses.

It’s worth mentioning that in 2007 a jouster in England was killed in precisely the same way as Henry II when a splinter from a lance got him right through the eye-slits of the helmet. Concussions are common, as are injuries to the hands and shoulders.

The UJC is the brainchild of Charlie Andrews, who founded the organization in 2010 with the intention of popularizing jousting as the Next Big Thing in extreme sports. Charlie was taught jousting by Patrick Lambke, aka “The Black Knight,” onetime mentor and now bitter rival.

Charlie, to put it mildly, has an ego. He’s proclaimed that it is vital for the future of the sport that he win the World Championship.

Considering the “World” in this case is no more than a dozen guys who meet at various venues around the country, that tends to grate on people’s nerves.

Charlie is a tad obsessive about jousting. He’s admitted he’s gone broke and lost his family trying to promote the sport.

Add to that a lot of typical reality-show bickering, and talk like, “If you put my grandmother up on a horse I’d knock her on her…” and you’ve got a pretty high irritation factor.

Plus, jousting is actually a very sophisticated sport requiring superior horsemanship and fine point control of a long lance that is not light while atop a bouncing horse. The uneducated eye will not see the subtleties of technique and become easily bored.

Not to mention jousting is expensive. It requires a full suit of custom-made plate armor, a carefully-trained horse only slightly smaller than an elephant which consumes massive amounts of grain, not hay, and the rig to haul it all around in. Factor in training time and that $20,000 purse for the championship doesn’t look all that big.

So who does this kind of thing?

To begin with, big guys. If jousting had weight classes, a 200 pound man would be a lightweight. Other than that, former soldiers, football players, one former MMA fighter, guys who grew up on horses, a few who learned to ride just so they could joust.

And why do they do it?

Glory. The charge that comes from mastery of something so strenuous, so dangerous, and so cool.
You see real jousting, and you don’t wonder where all that ego comes from.

Now if only they could learn to talk with the delicate courtesy of the knights of old.