THE KNIGHTS OF BENEVOLENCE
January 29th, 2026. Queens, New York. The Armored League and Gladiators NYC have arranged a hexagonal MMA cage flanked by rows of seats on each side. People spill into walkways and hang over the rails on the second floor. It’s a sold-out house: packed and unruly. A giant wave pool of bodies inside Melrose Ballroom. The room is saturated in an intense technicolor veil.
Upstairs, the fighters step into complex labyrinths of armor and begin to warm up—thoughtfully and with great ceremony. Suddenly, I am witnessing the late medieval ritual of knights preparing for battle. A gentleman in red kneels to the floor while someone fusses over his armor, the Scorpius constellation stitched onto his tunic. How bewitchingly akin to The Accolade, painted by Edmund Blair Leighton in 1901, that appears over and over again on my TikTok feed, in edits and moodboards…
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