This is all just a newfound hobby for Meligan, who is still a full-time health care worker. to talk about his new-found trade and talents. The Boatyard Bar & Grill on North Ninth Avenue is hosting a viewing party of tonight's 'Forged in Fire: Knife or Death,' and Meligan will be at the bar at 8 p.m. There are also 'sudden-death rounds' and obstacles with specific requirements, such as cutting clean through a 15-pound red snapper with one cut. The person who slices and dices their way through the maze with the fastest time wins. You'll have to tune in to see how he fares, but Meligan said that during the episode, he grips a 'two-handed war machete' to slice through boxes, buckets of sand and rocks, ice blocks and more. The episode that will air tonight was shot in Atlanta in February. Out of the thousands of applicants, only 40 people were selected to compete on 'Forged in Fire: Knife or Death,' which is hosted by WWE Hall of Famer Bill Goldberg. I've got my bachelor's degree in nursing and been doing that 11 years. 'Whenever you do videos or what not you gotta kind of take on a character so people watch you, but I'm quite educated, man.

'I've actually donated blades to charity, I donated them to Junior League, so I mean I'm more than just some crazy pirate,' Meligan said. He admits to portraying a sort of over-the-top character in his internet videos, but despite the vibe he may give off online, Meligan insists he's no 'backwoods thug.' Meligan has become a bit of a local internet sensation - the mackerel slicing video has more than 33,000 views. It's very dangerous - these blades are sharper than most folks have ever seen.' Moving them around like that, I guess it's just a natural talent. 'That's no formal training, man, that's just from me using blades. 'That's just a backwoods swamp pirate, man,' he said. One video posted to the Meligan's Pirate Forge Facebook page from Saturday shows the local bladesmith wielding a blade made by re-purposing the leaf spring of an old truck to slice two 15-foot, 30-pound king mackerel into segments (he cleaned and kept the fish after the demonstration, feeding some of it to his pet cats). I'm making blades like they had in the Viking age.'īut he's not just making the blades. Meligan has tapped into a showman-style talent he didn't know he had by twirling the blades, chopping stuff up with them, and recording it all for the internet to see, something he also started doing a year ago. The things I make are true real-world, battle-worthy stuff. 'I'm making anything from chef knives to fillet knives to these big hogsplitters, man,' Meligan said.

In March, Meligan was featured in Blade Magazine, a magazine that showcases bladesmiths from across the country. Last year, Meligan built his own a forge - a workplace that uses fire to heat and shape iron - which he labors over to re-purpose old material, heat it up and hammer it into homemade blades. But I just started doing this, and man, everything's kind of been blowing up.' And about a year ago I got this drive in me to start forging blades. 'I've been around blades my whole life because I was born and raised out here in the country, man, whether it's fishing or hunting, I've always had a blade in my hand,' Meligan said. 'I heard they were looking for contestants and I thought, 'Well, not only do I make blades and I forge them, I can swing the hell out of them because of my background of being raised in the country out here in Pensacola,'' Meligan said.īladesmithing and knife-making are in Meligan's blood, but he's only really been doing them for a year. The show pits the nation's best bladesmiths, martial artists and knife experts against each other in a timed obstacle course that the contestants have to slice, stab and chop their way through for a chance at the $20,000 grand prize. Meligan, 33, will appear on an episode of the History Channel's 'Forged in Fire: Knife or Death' tonight at 9. From nursing in a local open-heart, cardiovascular intensive care unit to wielding handmade blades on national TV, Pensacola's Wayne Meligan has had a pretty interesting past year.

Forged in fire knife or death