If they did it would most likely resemble Irish stick fighting I think.
Guess how it works, hehehe.

And that while with some fencing or stick fighting armor (and maybe something soft arround the clubs head/a replacement for the axe head) it should be pretty safe...
Yep, it would resemble Irish stick fighting (although those sticks I believe are a little longer then those used by African and American tribes), but do people practice that as a sport?
Explorers coming back from America would say that the natives with their warclubs were as good as European fencemasters, but you know seamen.
Then there are clubs that are flattened, looking more like swords, those aren't interesting since they look like swords.
A double short club would be a pretty interesting weapon to play with... (so, then I need one more...)
They work very good for trowing by the way, I can imagine the head coming first doing some nasty damage (like axe trowing).
Maybe we should make one sport of it. This is a club, but you can imagine it being an axe...

Let's start a club of clubs!   

We'll get padded and armoured and have a blast!

Clubs are just the best. There's a Filipino stick fighting thing called escrima, but I think that's more stickfighting- they're long, light clubs. I bet some sword tricks would work with clubs like a high-to-low feint. There's a lot of quarterstaff manuals out there though (it's a kind of club!)- try http://ejmas.com/jmanly/articles/2001/jmanlyart_mccarthy_0901.htm

There's a good article on longsword here: http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_arms_gls.html
Some of the guards here might work for a longer club.

Tech,
Not all of us have as sharp a set of words at our hands as you do 
Most of us will have to resort to screaming and four letter words 
Not very effective

Willeke

Seems to me that in mideaval times, there was quite a scene involving quarterstaves; quite vicious at times.

Various Asian martial arts use a variety of club-like weapons, most notably the Filipino arts of arnis/escrima, which have refined stickfighting to a remarkable degree.

I suppose you could include the somewhat-fanciful "weapon" fighting they do with various "reinactment" groups like the SCA.  They use mostly weapons made of rattan, with foam padding and lots of ducttape.

Quote:


Why though  ???

Nails may make it look more menacing, but they don't actually help. The'll puncture sure, but let's look at:

Baseball bat hitting arm vs Spikey bat hitting arm, something which would happen if say, a swing to the head is blocked by the forearm. The nails will puncture the arm, and be gruesome and all, whereas the baseball bat will shatter the bone..... Which would you rather have?

Plus if things get too close, there's a good chance of the nails catching yourself, whereas, with a plain bat in super-close quarters, no one will get hurt....