M-1 features men fighting with swords and shields while wearing suits of armor

M-1 has always been a little bit weird, but they may have broken new ground on weird with today's show which capped off the undercard with a fight between...some sort of knights?

There's swords and shields and some sort of muay thai clinch and judo throws.

I'm not sure if it was amazing or awful or what, but I'm certainly leaning a little more toward amazing.

Here are some gifs from the twitter of @grabakahitman:

The closest thing I can come up with to compare this to was the weird Kyoshin Karate break at PRIDE 6 between Hiroki Kurosawa and Nobuaki Kakuda.

Of course, that was just karate in the middle of an MMA show where as this was two men in armor kicking and throwing each other and occasionally whacking each other with swords and shields.

So...yeah, this was different.

And probably more awesome?

Yeah, it was totally more awesome.

If you're in to this sort of thing, be sure to check out T.P. Grant's Lost Art series which looks at the actual, historic martial art of fighting in armor.