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My father, now a model husband and parent, etc. Had a violent streak when he was young, and lived in a broken home. He has been in at least 3 or 4 real knife fights when he was in his 20's. Though he's 61 now, he still finds time to occasionally train with me, and offer his experiences. 
He frowns on knife fighting, and doesn't like to practice it, but today we did some knife sparring, and both of us got cut up rather badly (figuratively of course).
Even though I invest just as much time training with knives as I do in grappling and judo, I really have come to understand the grim reality of a knife fight between two skilled people. First of all, your skill level does NOT give you that much of an advantage in a knife fight. Unless the man thrusts at you like a karate blackbelt, the knife will be moving around in confusing directions and patterns, and can be snapped out at any angle.
Second,
Defanging the snake will a lot of times end in a mutual cutting of arms... This is something Paul Vunak doesn't seem to stress in his videos. A lot of the time, you will succeed in cutting the opponent's arm, but will inevitably suffer a cut artery yourself as well. This means that you may end the fight and win, but will bleed to death soon if not immediately helped...
Third,
A fight can be over in an instant if someone is adept at THROWING knives. However this is dangerous as you can lose your only means of defense.
There is not a whole lot of "fancy footwork" necessarily in a real knife fight. It becomes more of a cat-like "stalking" and looking for an opening to score. Bouncing around like I've seen some people do on certain videos does have its advantages, but it is easy to get "stop-hit" yourself with a well placed cut. Though footwork is essential in order to get your body away from danger.
Fourth is intimidation. Your fine motor skills will most likely fail in a knife fight. It's scary enough to feel like you're fighting in slow motion using just empty hands...but imagine having that same "freeze" when knives are involved...
I am no knife expert by any means. Neither is my father who has luckily survived knife fights against less than skilled individuals. The mentality of "I'm a tough knife fighter" is really fake in my opinion.... Just like the samurai of old Japan, most of the duels did not end in one man over another...but usually in mutual killing. One samurai was cut down, and the other mortally wounded until he died shortly after, or both killing each other at the same time. Or maimed for life.
It's gruesome business. I don't know my point of this post haha, but I figure I'd write some of my thoughts down.
Take care,
Ryu
He frowns on knife fighting, and doesn't like to practice it, but today we did some knife sparring, and both of us got cut up rather badly (figuratively of course).Even though I invest just as much time training with knives as I do in grappling and judo, I really have come to understand the grim reality of a knife fight between two skilled people. First of all, your skill level does NOT give you that much of an advantage in a knife fight. Unless the man thrusts at you like a karate blackbelt, the knife will be moving around in confusing directions and patterns, and can be snapped out at any angle.
Second,
Defanging the snake will a lot of times end in a mutual cutting of arms... This is something Paul Vunak doesn't seem to stress in his videos. A lot of the time, you will succeed in cutting the opponent's arm, but will inevitably suffer a cut artery yourself as well. This means that you may end the fight and win, but will bleed to death soon if not immediately helped...
Third,
A fight can be over in an instant if someone is adept at THROWING knives. However this is dangerous as you can lose your only means of defense.
There is not a whole lot of "fancy footwork" necessarily in a real knife fight. It becomes more of a cat-like "stalking" and looking for an opening to score. Bouncing around like I've seen some people do on certain videos does have its advantages, but it is easy to get "stop-hit" yourself with a well placed cut. Though footwork is essential in order to get your body away from danger.
Fourth is intimidation. Your fine motor skills will most likely fail in a knife fight. It's scary enough to feel like you're fighting in slow motion using just empty hands...but imagine having that same "freeze" when knives are involved...
I am no knife expert by any means. Neither is my father who has luckily survived knife fights against less than skilled individuals. The mentality of "I'm a tough knife fighter" is really fake in my opinion.... Just like the samurai of old Japan, most of the duels did not end in one man over another...but usually in mutual killing. One samurai was cut down, and the other mortally wounded until he died shortly after, or both killing each other at the same time. Or maimed for life.
It's gruesome business. I don't know my point of this post haha, but I figure I'd write some of my thoughts down.
Take care,
Ryu
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