‘This ain’t no Medieval Times dinner show,” Charlie Andrews, reigning world jousting champion, says just before the finals where he nearly takes someone’s head off.
Yes, I did say jousting, and no, “Knights of Mayhem,” Nat Geo’s new reality show about modern-day jousting ain’t no show where ladies faire and courtiers in giant pantaloons dance around to the amusement of fat tourists glomming down chili dogs.
Extreme Jousting, (is there any other kind?), is suddenly and not quietly making a comeback after only 500 years!
And much of the rise of the sport in the USA is due to Andrews, a mean, not-lean wild man who has lost his wife, his life savings and everything else a wild man might hold dear in order to pursue this deadly sport and make it the next big thing.
Never doubt a 240-pound man in 150 pounds of armor charging at you on a 2,000- pound steed in the heart of Texas.
On tomorrow night’s premiere, we follow Andrews, a tremendously unlikeable, but very competent jouster as he sets up his training camp and then risks his life as often as he can to charge at other “knights” at top speed with a giant lance.
And I was riveted.
His chief rival is the quietly lethal Black Knight, Patrick Lambke, who is everything you imagine someone with that moniker would be. Lambke got into jousting when he was fresh out of the army in the 1990s. He worked one joust as a stunt photographer and was hooked.
In fact, Lambke taught Charlie everything he knows about jousting and now Charlie has overtaken him as world champ.
It is Charlie’s dream to get full-contact jousting into arenas and out of the Renaissance Fair circuit. To do that he needs rookies — athletes willing to risk everything including their lives — in order to make this a giant professional sport.
And with this reality series, he might succeed. What you’re watching, with your heart in your mouth, is the birth of a sport before it gets controlled by corporations, sponsors, advertisers, agents and networks.
It’s raw, it’s got heart and the enemies are really enemies — unlike the theatrics of wrestling.
When Charlie says, “Even though Patrick is my ‘brother,’ I will cut his head off with a chain saw and leave it on the side of the road,” he means it. And then he almost does it with a lance.
There are the rivalries, the scared rookies and the daily risk of death for an insane sport these guys love. And best, there are the weekly jousts themselves.
“It’s the new extreme sport that’s also the oldest extreme sport,” Andrews growls between expletives.
Not for nuthin’ but these knights are enough to make those maidens faire who work at Medieval Times rip their bodices right off.