Medieval tournaments were a professional circuit: knights toured between events, and winners took horses, armor and ransoms from those they unhorsed. William Marshal, later regent of England, built his early fortune this way — his biography claims five hundred knights captured. Gunpowder made heavy cavalry obsolete, and after King Henry II of France was fatally lanced through the visor at a Paris joust in 1559, the sport itself slid into ceremony and extinction.
Tournament knight no longer exists as a living trade. Here is what erased it, and which profession took on the work.
393 – 1850
Patrons, prizes and fairground champions
Paid sport survived the Olympics' end in scattered forms. Medieval tournament knights lived on ransoms and prize money — William Marshal was said to have captured five hundred knights in his career. Tudor courts kept salaried real-tennis masters; eighteenth-century English cricket professionals played for aristocratic patrons' wagers; bare-knuckle prizefighters like James Figg, celebrated as England's first boxing champion from 1719, drew huge crowds. Respectable society enjoyed the spectacle while ranking the performers barely above vagrants.
Where that work lives now
The body as a career: from Olympia's crowned victors to today's global stars, a short, brutal, winner-take-most profession watched by billions.
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