Knights of the parking lot: NC Dire Drakes medieval fight club prepare for combat

Each weekend the sounds of clanging steel, blaring metal music and the thumping of 300-pound tires flipping, wake the neighborhood. The noise isn’t coming from a nearby construction site, but from a group of armored men, waving swords and shields as they practice combat in their parking lot.

These knights in real shining armor are the NC Dire Drakes, a medieval combat fighting team, outfitted in 80-pounds of steel armor, shields and dulled axes and swords. They compete in an up-and-coming worldwide sport that combines extreme athleticism and the history of 14th and 16th century combat styles.

“I think people like it because of the academic and athletic combination.” said Dire Drakes leader Jeff Barnes. “We’re all about the nerdy athlete, the athlete that was super fit in high school or college and maybe late in their 20s put on a bunch of weight sitting on the couch eating Doritos or playing video games but is now realizing they want to do something with their life,”

But despite this sport’s nerdy roots, medieval combat, or buhurt, is not a reenactment costume event. Fighters like Barnes take their physical fitness seriously and work to prepare for brawls here in the United States and all around the world. Athletes spend up to $10,000 on their armor, or their kit, and their equipment. In their quest for fitness and glory they hold strenuous workouts daily.

Barnes has excelled in athletics since he was in high school. He has two martial arts masters’ rings, one in Kung Fu and the other in Taekwondo. But like so many others, personal struggles set him on a path he never imagined, or wanted, for himself.

“My father passed away in 2009 and I ended up putting on a bunch of weight,” said Barnes. “But around 2012 I knew I needed to do something about it, so I went all in for exercise and fitness.”

Barnes started running- and running far. When 30 miles just wasn’t enough, Barnes went on to Strongman weightlifting competitions and Spartan Races, that test both physical and mental abilities.

But through all these extreme physical tests and weight loss, something was still missing, until some friends introduced him to buhurt.

“I traveled down to South Carolina and got connected with the Palmetto Knights team,” said Barnes. “Then with some friends here in North Carolina we started the Dire Drakes as a North Carolina extension of the Palmetto Knights for fighters around here.”

Now, Barnes has traveled all around the country to compete in medieval combat, and even abroad to Barcelona and Rome with Team USA.

His team meets multiple days a week, including every Saturday morning. These guys might look like any other CrossFit team when their neighbors peer out their windows- but only until they spot the hundreds of pounds of historically accurate medieval combat armor strapped to the fighter’s bodies.

Barnes slams Bender with a dulled ax at a Dire Drakes practice.

In competition fighters meet in one of two combat types: duel melees and pro-fights.

In pro-fights, two fighters meet one-on-one and fight to earn points by hitting certain striking points on their opponents. In group melee, multiple fighters from a team battle the same number of opponents from another team. The fighters meet in the field, which is usually a pit of sand, and brawl until there is one man left standing. Fighters are eliminated when they have three points of contact with the ground.

“Melee fighting is my favorite, I would compare it to something like football or hockey where there’s a certain atmosphere and electric charge in the air,” said Dire Drake fighter Jarred Bender. “I appreciate the teamwork that’s needed.”

Medieval combat fighters work hard to maintain order in what could be a dangerous and chaotic environment. Teams study the authentic historical tournament rules and just like any other sport operate at the mercy of an international team of referees, or marshals. Mutual respect bonds the fighters.

“I’m there to put people to the ground. I’m there to win,” said Barnes. “But I can hit somebody full force in the face with a six-foot ax, and they’re gonna go down, and at the end of it, I can pick them up off the ground, dust them off and go at it again.”

LARPing, or live-action role-playing, is almost a forbidden word around the Dire Drakes. Barnes said the confusion between LARPing, and medieval combat is the most common misconception of the sport, and something he is actively working to disrupt.

“It’s very frustrating, I want to be very clear that we do not LARP, this is not LARPing because it is a sport based upon sport rules,” said Barnes. “We’re athletes, and we take the physical component very seriously.”

Even as a bystander, the clash of Barnes steel ax against Bender’s helmet feels earthshaking.

“Of course ​part of me is focused on the mission at hand when I’m wearing the armor, which is getting into a fight and winning that fight,” said Bender. “But the other half of me is thinking about how cool it is that I actually get to do something like this and wear this armor and fight this way.”

But before you can earn that armor, it takes months of physical commitment and technical training. For the team rookie,Michael Moore, the learning curve for getting ready to compete has been steep.

“Just to wear that armor you have to be in good physical shape, and then to swing an ax with it, that’s a whole other story,” said Moore. “I joined the team because I wanted to get in shape and have fun while doing it.”

If you’re training with the Dire Drakes, getting in top shape is inevitable. Every practice begins with stretching, calisthenics, and running. Barnes’ workouts always include laps around the parking lot with a life-size dummy thrown over the backs of the fighters. This intense cardio workout prepares the fighters to get a feel for moving quickly with heavy armor on their backs.

After the workout, the team must break for 45 minutes to ‘get in the kit.’ This process of putting on armor is almost as physically rigorous as the workout that precedes it, and it usually requires two sets of hands.

“You always begin with the underlayers and then work your way up from the feet to the head,” said Bender. “It’s a long process but you have to take your time and do it right.”

Fighters can spend anywhere between $2,000 to $10,000 on a full kit of armor. The steel needs to fit its fighter perfectly and almost operate as a second skin when out in a brawl.

But the momentum of this rapidly growing sport is under threat as the production of armor halts due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Most of the materials bought by medieval fighters around the world come from companies based in Ukraine. Companies like Art of Steel and Forge of Svan have shifted their focus from making dull swords, to creating real barricade materials needed to protect their cities from invaders.

“We understand that the Ukrainian armors are literally in the fight for their lives right now and making armor for Westerners is not a high priority,” said Barnes. “We do also worry about people getting the supplies they need to compete, and we hope this doesn’t slow us down here.”

Despite the delays, Barnes said that the sport will continue to grow.

“My hope is in the next few years we’re doing what we do best, which is training, fighting, raising the next generation of best fighters and taking those fighters internationally,” said Barnes. “And hopefully, that Team USA wins on the international level.”

With kits on, the Dire Drakes finish practice by grabbing their shields and weapons, and dueling on the grass next to the parking lot they work out in.

“One thing we never do is stop,” said Barnes. The Dire Drakes cheer on their teammates as they flip a 300-pound tire.

The athletic component is only a small part of what draws people into this sport.

“Knights and the honor of knightly virtues is so romanticized in the media” said Barnes. “But this is real, it’s brutal physically and means a lot more to the fighters than I think people can really understand.”

Not all fighters are the same: the space created by the Dire Drakes empowers fighters who didn’t fit in on the high school football team but always had a desire to play sports. That is what makes the sport so special, Bender says, it’s inclusive of any kind of fighter who wants to be involved.

“There’s the guys that just want to go there and fight and then there’s people that want to immerse themselves in the culture or people who just want to play Lord of the Rings,” said Bender. “There’s not just one type of person in this, there’s all different types of people and that’s great.

The Dire Drakes team often hang out together outside of practice, talking about movies they like and their families at home. The team has become a family, Barnes said, and that bond makes a difference in group melee fighting.

“You have to work in a team to be successful, you have to have strategy and hold to that strategy together, you need good communication, so you have to know the people on your team well enough to know how they’re gonna react,” said Bender. “In this sport we like to say it’s half about the sport and the other half is about the brotherhood that you get from the sport.”