M-1 Global to launch new medieval armored knight fighting project

Bloody Elbow 2.0 | Anton Tabuena

Back in August 2014, M-1 Global hosted an event in St. Petersburg, Russia that pitted some of the top talent in the region, as well as the country’s first professional armored knight fight at an MMA event. Following positive response from the crowd in attendance, the promotion has decided to launch the ‘M-1 Medieval’ project, which is an offshoot of M-1 that will feature professional fights between armored knights.

According to M-1 officials, the sport will entail two fighters who “wear armor of medieval warriors and use replicas of ancient swords with blunt razor to fight each other.” The official date for the start of the project is yet to be revealed.

The first knight fight, which took place at M-1 Challenge 50: Battle on Neva, featured five-time World Champion Sergei Ukolov against America’s Michael Ivey. Ukolov was awarded the victory. This was followed by two more knight fights at the following event, which took place in the mountainous terrains of Ingushetia. Ukolov was present and earned his second victory over Maxim Plaksin.

While it has been several months since M-1 Global hosted a knight fight, it appears the promotion is interested in adding several of these ‘medieval’ fights in some of their upcoming events.

GIF courtesy of @GrabakaHitman.

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About the author

Karim Zidan

Karim Zidan is a investigative reporter and feature writer focusing on the intersection of sports and politics. He has written for BloodyElbow since 2014 and has served as an associate editor since 2016. He also writes for The New York Times and The Guardian. Karim has been invited to speak about his work at numerous universities, including Princeton, and was a panelist at the South by Southwest (SXSW) film festival and the Oslo Freedom Forum. He also participated in the United Nations counter-terrorism conference in 2021. His reporting on Ramzan Kadyrov’s involvement in MMA, much of which was done for Bloody Elbow, has led to numerous award nominations, and was the basis of an award-winning HBO Real Sports documentary.