> a tedious, dirty matter of concentration and endurance
Eh? Not at all. In sabre fencing, it's rare for a touch to take more than 15 seconds. Even in épée, which most closely approximates a real duel, one minute is about the norm.
In real life, "winning" 10-7 isn't all that much of a win. More to the point, "a touch" doesn't cause a position reset and some touches are far more important than others.
Fencing is amazing, but it isn't fighting even if fencers do better at sword fighting than folks with no experience.
I had an in-depth reply to this, but I accidentally closed the browser tab in the middle of composing it. So I'll leave it at this for now: historical accounts of the duration of sword duels do not distribute themselves qualitatively differently from modern fencing, and even less so from the fencing of 100 years ago.
I guess I'm talking more about medieval stuff (about which I also don't know much). Swords, maces, that kind of stuff. I might be talking about something slightly different than the article.
Eh? Not at all. In sabre fencing, it's rare for a touch to take more than 15 seconds. Even in épée, which most closely approximates a real duel, one minute is about the norm.