All-Star History DM

All-Star Hordes Of History Death Match!

Outside a small town in central Colorado, would-be knights don armor and chain mail to joust in medieval lists in front of hundreds of avid onlookers who swig from tankards of grog and chew on roasted turkey legs. At the same time, near Williamsburg, Virginia, Revolutionary War enthusiasts gape at men garbed in Colonial Blue or British Red as the Fight for American Independence is recreated before their eyes. Then of course, there are the re-enactments of historic Civil War battles from Gettysburg to Bull Run and beyond.

Now Victor J. “Vic” McManus has brought them all together. On Pay-Per-View.

Every month for the past year and a half, McManus has staged the “All-Star Hordes of History Death Match,” enticing hundreds of thousands of bloodthirsty home-viewers to cough up thirty bucks a pop to witness inter-historic bloodbaths between competing re-enactment teams from all over the world. It makes for some interesting match-ups, because the squads aren’t necessarily battling against their traditional opponents.

“Last month we had the Confederate Army fighting a bunch of Australian Aborigines,” McManus boasted. “It was pretty interesting to say the least, but that was nothing compared to the time we had the Irish Republican Army going against the Spanish Inquisition. Talk about your conflicts, and I don’t just mean physical!”

Any bum cards in the lot, Vic?

“Well, there was that match between the Chicago Seven and the Little Big Horn-era Sioux Nation,” McManus says with a grimace. “Basically you had a couple of stoned-out hippies, a couple of spoiled disenfranchised rich kids and a black panther against about a thousand or so pissed-off screaming Indians, so there was never a real contest there. The Chicago boys put up the best fight they could, but it made a Mike Tyson bout seem as long as ‘Nicholas Nickleby.’ Thank God for our ‘No Refund’ policy.”

Besides the paid television income, McManus also rakes in millions from video sales and merchandise such as action figures and t-shirts. But the biggest action still seems to come from Las Vegas, where literally billions of dollars are wagered on the featured combatants. A February 2001 telecast pitting King Arthur’s Knights of The Round Table against a mob of 1920s-era Teamsters broke the single-event betting record which had been set just weeks before by the Super Bowl.

And McManus shows no signs of letting up. He claims to have enough re-enactment teams lined up to run the series into infinity.

“Hell, I’m just getting started!” McManus whooped. “We’ve got the Huns signed up to take on the Women’s Suffrage Movement, and I’m this close to inking Yassir Arafat and the PLO to fight the Branch Davidians. And get this! Janet Reno as the special referee! Is that entertainment or what?”

The next scheduled Pay-Per-View is September 8, with the Axis Powers of World War II suiting up to take on the always-feisty Bay of Pigs Cuban Refugees in a “Consolation Prize Conflict for The Ages.” Contact your cable or satellite provider for details.