Reddit reviews Secrets of the Sword

> The reasoning behind your history of the Epee is conjecture, nothing more, and more than anything most likely represents what you wish were true.

There are actually written records from the late 19th century, you know. You should read this, or perhaps this.. First person accounts from people who were familiar with the epee du combat and the beginnings of sporting epee. Very readable, both of them. Seriously, I recommend them. Good books.
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> MMA moves do work in a real fight, whereas many of the fanciful whippy moves of modern fencing would not be useful with a real weapon.

Nobody is fighting with a real weapon. I mean, if you're into historical research, great. But training for a "real fight", whatever you envision that to be, is about as useful as training for a mammoth hunt. There are no mammoth hunts in 2016. You spend your whole life in your back yard shooting at mammoth targets and talking about what it would be like to track a mammoth and studying how you would butcher one and inventing recipes for mammoth meat. Only problem: there are no mammoth hunts in 2016. None. It's over. Why not do something else instead of spending your life pretending to be training for something you'll never do? Take up target shooting, or go deer hunting.
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> We are not talking about rules etc. to make the competition safer (no eye pokes), but the actual utility of the techniques.

Actually we are. Singlestick was abandoned because it was too dangerous when you got good at it. Too many broken hands and collarbones. Epees let you fence full speed in practice, which was considered good for the real thing of epee du combat (see La Marche on the "flying attack", which is an attack that lands when your foot is still in the air and you're still accelerating).
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> Keep on keeping on and pretend that whipping your sword so that it bends around and hits your opponent on his back is anything besides playing whiptag.

That's an extremely unusual action. It was not the point of epee when the flexibility levels were set, and it's not much seen even today.
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> Edit: Can't actually do the whip-over-the-back move with an Epee, but can with a foil.

It's possible to flick over the back with an epee, but you have to be brutally strong and have world class technique. It's not a usual action, and it's not very effective if you try it too often.

See Tagliariol's last touch against Jeannet in the Olympic gold medal bout in 2008, for example. He was showing off. Heinzer can also do it. But as I said, it's very unusual.

The primary purpose and effect of an epee's specified flexibility, which was set by rules long before the flick was invented, was and is to have the stiffest blade possible that still let people fence full speed, and thus to avoid calling stuff like this "free fencing." That's not anything. It's not a good sport, and it's not good preparation for a real fight with those weapons, if that's important to you, which honestly why would it be, but anyway.