There's a new sport making it's way into the public domain, and it's bringing weapons-based combat back into the entertainment arena.
'Unified Weapons Master' (UWM) combines advanced technology with traditional martial arts and resembles a video game come to life.
Fighters are kitted out in intelligent combat armour, designed by Australian-based company Chiron Global, called the Lorica Mk II -- it's technology designed to withstand high-impact strikes from blunt martial arts weapons.
"The Lorica armour and scoring system objectively measure the force and location of strikes to a weapons martial arts fighter in real time during combat, while providing high levels of safety, and displays the damage that would occur to an unprotected fighter on a video screen using exciting CGI," UWM CEO Colin Blake told The Huffington Post Australia.
"It's based on medical research including fracture profile data, and converts force and anatomical location into virtual damage that accumulates until a fighter is 'knocked out' or 'killed'.
"The Lorica suit is therefore like an extreme form of a wearable video game console, creating a ton of data."
Now Blake and his team have the suit, they're in search of the world's best weapons martial arts fighters.
"Our goal is to create a forum where skilled weapons fighters from around the world, comprising a wide variety of styles and weapons, can compete against one another in full combat to determine who would have won the fight if they had been unarmoured, with science objectively determining the winner," Blake told HuffPost Australia.
The first underground Vital Target Combat (VTC) was held in March this year in Wellington, New Zealand, and was the first time the Lorica suit was ever tested in live combat.
"Overall, the armour and the technology stood up extremely well to the extensive punishment handed out to it over the three days," Blake said, though conceding, "fighting with martial arts weapons is extremely dangerous and is never completely risk- free no matter how well protected the fighters might be."
Eventually, Blake would like to see the Unified Weapons Master become a global professional sport.
"We are creating something new using state-of-the-art technology, but we are building on over two and a half thousand years of weapons martial arts history. These arts have very deep ties to the countries in which they were developed and their cultures, he said.
"We would like to see UWM reignite interest in weapons martial arts and have people from around the world enjoy watching the best weapons fighters compete in UWM."
To find out more about the Unified Weapons Master, head here.