Ulrich Von Tolstat, Master of Defense
Born in 1983 in Dallas, Texas.
We're at Pecan Park in Nacogdoches and we are watching a fencing lesson. I've got some students out here who are practicing basically this this style of fencing is from a fencing master named Salvator Fabris. He was an Italian fencing master who traveled around northern Italy teaching and eventually ended up in Denmark as the king's personal fencing teacher. And so that is the tradition that all of our stuff is based off of. And that's what these guys are working on out here. I'm what they call a master of defense. So that is the highest level of award for steel fencing combat.
It's actually, this organization is nationwide and in fact, worldwide. There's tens of thousands of people in this organization. And what we do is we travel around to different tournaments on certain weekends throughout the year to compete with other people who are doing similar things.
Anything on his body is a target. If I hit him in the arm, let's say, then he loses, according to our rules, use of that arm. So he has to switch to his other hand. Now, if I hit his other hand or his other arm, now he's defenseless. He has to yield that fight. The fight is over. If I hit him somewhere, I know this is audio, so what I'm doing is I'm pointing my tip of my sword from shoulder to shoulder. So basically his whole torso, his head, and his groin, those are all instant kills. Because in real life, if you're getting stabbed there, yeah, you might still be alive for a little while. You might live for a couple of weeks. You might die of infection. But you're probably not still fighting.
Again, you're listening to this so you can't see it. But on these, these are, these are replicas of 1500s and 1600s rapier swords. They are full steel. The only difference between these and the, and the actual thing is that these are just not sharp. And they have a blunt rubber tip on the end for safety.
Like people just kind of walk up and be like, hey, how's it going? And we're like, yeah, what's up? You want to, you want to interview us? Yeah, come on in. Here's a sword. Hold a sword. Feel what it feels like to stab somebody. Isn't that great? I mean, it's just, we just meet people very organically.