He Pulled it Off?! - Spinning Attack & Dark Souls Roll

"If you are the best swordsman, do not fear the second best swordsman; you must fear the worst swordsman, for you have no idea what they are going to do."

"If you don't know what you're doing, neither does the enemy"

I can tell he's under 25% equip load

The style is big on fear factor/unpreparedness, the blue swordsman has very clearly never fought a dual-wielding, rolling, spinning hook sword wielder which puts him at a disadvantage.

Ganking is the most historically accurate move in dark souls

This man is duel welding, rolling, spinning, and everything I've been told what NOT to do, and he's doing it pretty well-

You: Spend decades mastering the blade The guy she tells you not to worry about: Starts spinning and rolling with his double "Rivers of blood" katanas

Roll dodging? ✓ Switching hookblades into twinblades like a bloodborne trick weapon? ✓ Spinning all over the place? ✓ Jump attacks? ✓ My man is playing dark souls irl and im all for it, his roll probably even has Iframes.

The Dark Souls roll wasn't believable, someone with a giant club didn't appear out of nowhere and slam him into the ground.

"There is no risk too great when it comes to just absolutely styling on your enemy." - Sun Tzu

That stance at 4:00 is called a "die bu", 蝶步, or single leg butterfly stance. And it's basically used for every super hero landing. :)

I've always referred to moves like these as flourishing attacks. With well trained ability, they can often catch someone more traditionally trained off guard. It's unexpected and an immediate counter is often missed. It falls into the risk reward category. While it should never be a go to move, when timed and applied right, it could change or even end the fight. Use it at the wrong time or against the wrong opponent, it can still end the fight. Just in the opponent's favor.

This is a good example of "to pull off an unconventional move you need to be able to present a constant, real conventional threat".

I think the guy in blue just wanted to do something cool after red pulled off the spin XD

What Skallagrim stopped short of saying is that is that if you have that much skill and athleticism over your opponent, there are probably much less risky ways of winning.

Well this guy is using less HEMA tactics and seems to be more focusing on a more Shaolin style of armed fighting, a lot of their stuff is very acrobatic and explosive movements

As a Chinese swordsmanship practitioner, I know some of the background here. The red one is called "MoJun". It is not his real name, I do not know his real name, but this name is recognized the Chinese swordmanship community; the meaning is "evil lord" or "evil gentleman" depends on your interpretation on "Jun". The name of blue one is Minjun, Cui who is a student of Mojun. So you know the situation here is same as many stories in Chinese martial art matches: Master fights his student. This mathch is pretty much designed for demonstration of Mojun's fancy weapon techniques. I do not know if there is arrangement on this match or not, but this fact redueces the credibility of this match as a real high intensive ,full resistant combat. Also Mojun has mentioned that the weapon he uses is not a hook sword, it is a "Feng tou ge"(凤头铬, I do not have a good translation). Unlike hook sword which has a hook at its frondend, Fengtouge has a pointy perpendicular chisel which can peck into opponent when swing it. This makes Fengtouge's usage forcues more on striking rather than hooking.

“Spinning is useless in practical combat!” Obi-wan Kenobi “Only a Sith deals in absolutes.”

I've seen the hookblades a lot in games and a few times in movies, but i never thought i'd actually get to see a "real" wielder showing them off in practice! It's extremely cool to see!

When everyone is so concerned with fighting the "normal" way, of course the "weird" way can become an effective surprise. Your opponent doesn't expect you to do something that potentially puts your life at risk so suddenly.