Modern Ludus Rules and Regulations

[caiusbeerquitius]

In both cases the Gladiators would have the predominantly goal not to be wounded or disabled in the first few seconds of a fight as this would have been no opportunity to adequately show any kind of martial skill.
Even outside of Gladiatorial combat, as we know from common sense and we can read from later manuals on historic fencing, it is a lot more important in a fight with lethal weapons not to be hit, than it is to hit your opponent.

Hm. So you exclude the possibility, that, say, a very experienced fighter with a lot of fans would have been cheered by the crowd for or expected by the crowd to finish off an adversary very quickly and thus show his superior skill? What do you base that on?

Similarly, you exclude that a gladiator who had his first fight, and who was possibly inexperienced to the surroundings of a filled amphitheatre was either nervous, or keen to take his chance by taking a risk? What would you base that on? Or are those possibilities you have not thought of?

I am not sure that we can really use those later manuals for this specific question. Gladiatorial fight was rather different from the situations that influenced those later fighting styles. I still think that they are usable in regard of some actual fighting techniques, as similarities may be seen in ancient and medieval / early modern fighting books. But this is a different question.

Now if the same Gladiators, who were supposed to fight in the arena, would also fight in the Prolusio, they certainly would still display their skill of arms, maybe with less aggressiveness and power, but still just as skilled as he would have been trained to be.

Or maybe with more agressiveness and power? How could we know?

As we only have the Rudis from Oberaden and the three short Gladii from Pompeji, all of which cannot even be considered Gladiatorial with any certainty, we actually can only recreate the armour, but not the arms used by the Augustan Gladiators with a certain degree of certainty.
So if you use anything other than a good reproduction of the Oberaden Sica during your Proluiso fights, your wooden weapons are just as "modern" as our blunted steel weapons are.

You are turning the argument. It was "wood" vs. "blunt metal" i.e. the material, not about the form of the weapon.
As far as the form is concerned, I definitely agree. Isn´t there an alleged gladiatorial weapon from Switzerland also? Thought to be a sica as well?

Interestingly the fabric parts of Gladiator armor seem to have been quite resistant towards cuts and stabs, as we do never see them hanging in shreds even in very lifelike depictions of the moment after a fight

Yes, but do we not have at least one (I think there are some more) pieces of armour, i.e. a helmet from Pompeii, which shows a severe cutting damage, which was later on repaired with a bronze crescent? I am not convinced that iconography is the right source to look at, here.