Which Swordsman Could Win A Battle Royale?

Miyamoto Musashi walks onto one sand floor with five fighters from five other centuries: samurai vs knight, Roman gladiator, Landsknecht, Highlander and cavalry officer. Six gates opened, one opens again, and no history book says who walks out, so Mike runs it chapter by chapter with a survival tier for Musashi after each one. The arena fights back too, with a moat, a collapsing platform and a fire nobody warned them about. Musashi has two blades and every man on the floor out-reaches him, so the plan comes straight from the manual he wrote himself: Niten Ichi-ryu, a long sword and a short one, and a line about driving enemies together "as if tying a line of fishes." From there we separate what's real from what you've been told: why a murmillo leads with a twenty-two-pound shield, what the hooks on a Doppelsoldner's two-hander are for, what a cavalry sabre loses without a horse, and what a 2011 treadmill study found plate armor does to a medieval knight's breathing. He burned his legs taking the only staircase and gave it up inside a minute. Would you have come back down? Tell us below and subscribe to NerdHistory for the next gate. Hashtags #MiyamotoMusashi #SamuraiVsKnight #Samurai #MedievalKnight #NerdHistory