The knight was breathing heavily under the weight of his armour. All told, he was carrying somewhere between 30 and 40 kilograms of steel plate, gambeson and great helm.
It had been a hot afternoon. Even the blustery northwesterly wasn't enough to cool down when in the crush of the fighting ring.
Ryan Hungerford had unstrapped his helmet and clanked down on a bench in the shade. The knights were arrayed around, either munching on mixed lollies to recover or rehydrating.
"I've got two sons," Mr Hungerford said as he caught his breath. "One of them is watching today. He's up in the crowd. He's four."
"He actually calls it 'robots', because we all look like robots."
"He says, 'Daddy, are you going to play robots tonight?' and 'I want to be a robot when I grow up'."
Mr Hungerford smiled.
"I say, 'you can ... if you eat enough crayons'."
Mr Hungerford found his way into the medieval sport of buhurt about three years ago. A lot of the sport's faithful come from mixed martial arts backgrounds and transfer into the full-contact armoured team combat sport as a breakaway challenge. Mr Hungerford - an apprentice electrician by trade - found his way to the sport from film and then stayed for the friendship.
"It's that male drive," he said. "You want to go out and have a sword fight. Buhurt comes the closest to that real feeling of being in an actual medieval battle."
Players typically fight in teams of five. Striking the back of the neck, or the back of the knees is forbidden, but with a few exceptions, the rest is brutally straightforward. The last team standing wins.
At the weekend, Foreshore Park on Wharf Road was teeming with crowds for the city's Medieval Festival staged by Castle Forge. Live action roleplayers, historical re-enactment groups, the creative and the committed, flocked in droves to the Newcastle foreshore to show off, be seen, and take in a bout.
Arlo, Mr Hungerford's son, came down the hill with his mum before he was due back in the ring. They had to catch a train home as the afternoon wore on, and had come to say goodbye.
Mr Hungerford held out his gauntleted hand.
"Fist bump?" he said to his son. Arlo reached out and touched the steel.
Before he headed home, he gave his robot-dad a hug, wrapping his arms around the gorget as far as he could reach.
"He is very shy," Mr Hungerford had said earlier. Before he left, he said he was proud of him.
To take a poleaxe to the ribs in the ring, or a rollicking gauntlet blow to the helmet, is a unique sensation.
"It feels all the air leaves your body," Brisbane fighter Samuel Wride said. "Then the pain sets in."
Mr Wride was a stocky centre, standing under 6ft with a handshake grip like a vice. He is one of the country's highest profile fighters, with a sizeable online following to whom he is an ambassador for the sport.
"It's like rugby with weapons," he said, with a lifer's grin and gleam in his eye. "It's the best sport in the world."
"Armour is the great leveller. You put on armour and you have to learn to fight from scratch."
Asked what he would say if Arlo really did want to become a robot when he was older, he did not hesitate.
"I'd say, of course!" he said. "But wait until you're 18."
"I wish I had stumbled on it 10 years ago. I would have joined then, straight away. Once I knew it existed, I knew this was for me. I love it."
