I'd argue that it cannot ever be close to the same for as long as it's missing the vital psychological component of the fear for life that accompanied the real thing.
The impact of fear can be observed even in relatively safe modern combat sports. Moving from, say, freestyle wresting into MMA makes one a whole lot more cautious changing the fighting style altogether. In fact, I've witnessed multiple times how trained sportsmen coming to MMA would lose to newbies simply because they were too weary of traumas and acted less aggressively. Sportsmen often get lost when the whole setup changes from scoring points to physically beating opponents into submission risking the same fate for yourself. I can only imagine how much different it would be when the very life is at stake.
Indeed, the fear of being hit by a sharp sword is something that I am certain has an effect upon bouts. One major effect of the lack of fear is that participants become more and more keen to hit their opponents at all costs, resulting in double hits. Rules therefore exist to penalise those who aren't fighting "properly" by ignoring their own defence (e.g. the right-of-way rules in modern fencing).
Having said that, period texts discussing fighting with sharps acknowledge the problem of double hits, which were apparently quite common in duels with rapiers and smallswords, so the effect of tournament fighting is presumably to exaggerate an existing problem rather than introducing a completely new one.
> Having said that, period texts discussing fighting with sharps acknowledge the problem of double hits, which were apparently quite common in duels with rapiers and smallswords, so the effect of tournament fighting is presumably to exaggerate an existing problem rather than introducing a completely new one.
I've mistakenly thought that by "the same thing" you meant the actual medieval combat, not tournaments. Imitating tournaments is indeed a more achievable goal.
What I meant was that in contests with blunts, such as competitions or bouts in class, both fencers will sometimes hit each other simultaneously. I perceive a lot of this as being due to a lack of caution because the participants know they are not really in danger of death. Indeed, some people will simply rush forward to attack, with no thought of defending themselves, in an attempt to hit first and win.
However, in actual fights where the participants' life was at stake such double hits also occurred as well; many period authors were concerned about it and discussed tactics and techniques to minimise occurrences. So, I suggest that the effect of the lack of fear is to make an occurrence from "real combat" more likely rather than to introduce a new factor.
As an example, here's a book which discussed the matter (here called a "contretemps"). The same author wrote a different book discussing what to do in competitive school play; this one relates only to self-defence, duels and other deadly combat:
The impact of fear can be observed even in relatively safe modern combat sports. Moving from, say, freestyle wresting into MMA makes one a whole lot more cautious changing the fighting style altogether. In fact, I've witnessed multiple times how trained sportsmen coming to MMA would lose to newbies simply because they were too weary of traumas and acted less aggressively. Sportsmen often get lost when the whole setup changes from scoring points to physically beating opponents into submission risking the same fate for yourself. I can only imagine how much different it would be when the very life is at stake.