Opinions on Knife Defense Effectiveness

[sensei8]

Please check out this video....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEUZg_YaM5o

After having viewed this video, what are your opinions as to its effectiveness against a knife?

Imho, I see nothing of effectiveness value. Why? Several things that I noted while watching said video.

1) The attacker just stands there doing nothing after the intial attack.

2) The defender is just slapping as fast as he can, but, there's no substance to it. Super sloppy!

3) While the defender is using a knife himself, his head is wide open for counterattack from the attacker. While the attacker might be receiving some damage from the defender, the attacker might still be able to deal out his own fatal damage to the defenders head. DANGEROUS!

4) Defenders footwork doesn't provide any smooth transitions to the inside or the outside.

Your thoughts?

[Toptomcat]

'Just slapping as fast as you can' is one of the more dangerous things you can do with a sharp knife, really. Making light slap-boxing touches into life-threatening wounds is one of the principal reasons to use an edged weapon over a blunt one.

That said, agreed that this is a poor defense against a trained attacker.

[tallgeese]

I'll second tomcat by and large.

The force multiplier afforded by an edged weapon is exceptional. The proof is always how a pattern will affect it's intended targets. As for the defense after the inital attack I agree. There seems to be the assumption that the initial counter attack defangs the knife fromt he attacker. This might not be the case for several reasons. A miss, or heavy clothes, ect.

I've seen what I would consider better, but I've seen far more I'd consider worse.

[Lupin1]

I'm not sure how realistic any knife-knife combat is. I don't know many people who aren't criminals who carry around anything bigger than a pocket knife. If someone's mugging you, he might have a knife, but I doubt you will and I doubt you'll have it out and ready to do those moves. And all that attacker had to do was step in and thrust is knife into that dude's stomach while he was doing his whole cat-fight slapping routine. Just doesn't look very realistic to me.

[tallgeese]

Granted here that the effects of the cuts aren't being taken into consideration. Reactivity to damage is something that is hard to realistically train and will vary from person to person.

As to knife v. knife I think that a review of incidents would hold up that most knife altercations don't go that route. However, you could seriously alter those percentages in your case if you trained in carrying a blade regularly for deployment.

Size of blade and type shouldn't matter in a well devised system. What's more important is the durabilbuty of the blade, sharpness, and skill of the user. Two inches of well honed, solid folder or small fixed blade will open lots of wound channel.

[Kuma]

IMO....it's garbage.

Michael Janich is a great instructor if you'd like to see some good knife fighting. He does good knife defense too.

[joesteph]

Michael Janich . . .

Going right to 3:00 and watching what follows is eye-opening.

[algernon]

Knife versus knife fighting, particularly in the United States, is typically studied and practiced only as a curiosity. The purpose of most of these seminars is not to provide practical defensive skills, but rather to explore bladed combat as a topic of recreational interest.

Also, the segment was very brief and clearly lacking context. There may have been explanation of his techniques that were missed.

That being said, the techniques were lengthy, and did not have any apparent meaningful structure. The worst part was the techniques’ lack of consideration of the attacker's weapons beyond the initial thrust.

[ps1]

I agree with algernon that the clip has no context. However, from what I can see, it looks as though he's trying to completely overwhelm his opponent by just moving fast and random. While that works in theory, the problem is the opponent is more than capable of doing that to him also. What you would likely end up with is two people with alot of cuts (none of which are likely life threatening). Anytime you get in that scenario, the bigger/stronger/faster person is going to win. That's not good for self defense. There's just so much wasted energy.

That said, the likelihood of being attacked by someone with an knife, while you're also wielding a knife and prepared for the attack is very small.

[Toptomcat]

I agree with algernon that the clip has no context. However, from what I can see, it looks as though he's trying to completely overwhelm his opponent by just moving fast and random. While that works in theory, the problem is the opponent is more than capable of doing that to him also. What you would likely end up with is two people with alot of cuts (none of which are likely life threatening). Anytime you get in that scenario, the bigger/stronger/faster person is going to win. That's not good for self defense. There's just so much wasted energy.

That said, the likelihood of being attacked by someone with an knife, while you're also wielding a knife and prepared for the attack is very small.

Why do you think none of the cuts are likely to be fatal? It doesn't require an expert at all to make a very dangerous cut with a sharp knife.