Your perception of Fencing and HEMA aside; I can promise you that if HEMA was an Olympic sport:

* The same money problems that Fencing athletes face would apply to potential 'HEMA athletes'.

* You would hate what HEMA becomes because now it's a sport that people try to win at, with the 'realism' aspect all but destroyed.

Yeah there still wouldn't be much money in it, it's pretty niche, and would probably only grow the viewership slightly. But at least it wouldn't be dumb.

Yea I always thought it was a bit silly that the method for winning was charging at your opponent and stabbing them a hundredth of a second before they stab you. As a person who knows nothing about fencing besides watching it on TV at the olympics once I think they should change the rules where it's not who stabs who first, but who stabs the other without getting stabbed themselves.

In some fencing disciplines if both opponents get a touch in a small time window, they both get the point.

Right, if you get stabbed you lose points, so the people who win both stabbed good and also didn't get stabbed. Whole dynamic of the sport would change and would actually look closer to in the movies.

>HEMA fencing

HEMA rapier fights look like Olympic fencing but in a ring (although seems linear movement is preferred anyway).

Football could be described in similarly demeaning terms, it isn't a useful point.

Soccer is objectively more readable by spectators (even educated ones) than Olympic fencing. You're using the Law of Averages, which is not real.

Its a sport not a sword fight, silly goose

It's definitely a sword fight.

You may as well say "it's an Olympic event, not a sport" or "it's a TV show, not an Olympic event." These are overlapping categories.

It's a sword fight sport you goofus

Yeah boxing is a combat sport but it looks nothing like a fight to the death.