So, apparently a group of people from Australia are trying to resurrect using martial combat as a sport. In this case in a gladiator style. It's really quite interesting and it looks like this is a great chance for old western martial arts to be brought back into practice. At least in a larger usage than it is now. A piece of the article said, 'UWM Lorica Gold and Lorica Red action“Our objective,” he says, “is to promote a new global combat sport with weapons. So the unified in Unified Weapons Master is about bringing all the different weapons arts from all around the world together in a single competition. There’s roughly 300 distinct martial arts practiced around the world, and of those styles, 96 of them are either entirely weapons-based, or have a significant amount of weapons-based training in their curriculum. What we want to do is bring all of those styles together in a competition, much like UFC did with mixed martial arts.”' May I add this will be great to see western martial arts thrown up against Japanese and other popular martial arts. I would love to try and partake in this sport. What is really amazing is the Lorica, at least that's what they are calling the suit, which has high tech sensors to have a real time impact records. I'm actually excited about this.
http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/unified-weapons-master-future-fighting/