Here’s an oldie, but goodie of a real Japanese samurai using a katana sword to slice a baseball in half. Just for reference, it takes a major league baseball player around .380-seconds to react to a pitched ball thrown at 100 mph from 60-feet away. Isao Machii is standing just 30 feet away from a pitching machine yet still manages to slice a baseball in half.
To even reach this level of skill, Machii had to master Iaido, which is a technique associated with the smooth, controlled movements of drawing the sword from its scabbard, striking or cutting an opponent, and then replacing the sword in the scabbard. Oh, did we mention that Machii also holds the Guinness World Record for most martial arts sword cuts in one minute (rush straw)? That’s right, you can see the video below.
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“The rules for this title state that the straw shafts must be a minimum of 90 cm in length and clearly divided into four sections of 15 cm. The cuts must then be made in the 15cm sections marked on the shafts. The martial arts master successfully wins the record with a total of 87 precise samurai sword cuts,” according to Guinness World Records.
