With the new Iron Maiden album Senjutsu arriving tomorrow Friday 3rd September, lead singer Bruce Dickinson has let it be known that after decades of battling Maiden mascot Eddie on stages across the globe, Olympic-level fencer Dickinson wants to engage the undead icon in lightsaber combat.
When asked if he will be fighting a samurai version of Eddie, who is depicted on the Senjusu album cover wielding a sword, Dickinson replied, “Here’s a weird thing. The International Fencing Federation, okay, the actual, like, Western fencing federation in particular, and this is kind of led by the French, now has internationally sanctioned competitions in lightsaber.”
“I kid you not, in lightsaber,” he reiterated, assuring everyone that this is not a joke.
The frontman continued, “I’ve seen one or two of their training sessions and they actually have competition lightsabers and they are the coolest things. I bought a couple of junior fencing lightsabers and they are just the coolest things on God’s green earth. It’s a full on combat lightsaber. You can bash the s*** out of it! It doesn’t break!”
He’s even had a go at playing around with the lighted weaponry himself.
“I carried these once into a hotel lobby and we ended up having lightsaber fights in the lobby and nobody stopped us because everybody’s like, “That is the coolest thing we’ve ever seen.” So the idea of having like a lightsaber duel with a samurai Eddie on stage, oh yeah, bring it on,” Dickinson exclaimed.
