We’ve taken a good long look at why knives are so dangerous and where they’re dangerous; it’s time now to consider how characters can respond to a knife attack when they’re on the receiving end. Due to the vastness of the topic and the fact that video, if not live demonstration-and-teaching, is really a prerequisite for actually learning specific techniques (of which I know only a few), I won’t be going into details. Instead I’ll be covering the general outline of each match up. As usual, I’ll be assuming the attacker and the attacked are both physically fit and uninjured at the beginning of the fight, as well as lacking any real armor.

Knife v Unarmed

A knife attack against somebody who is unarmed and unskilled is generally going to be lethal for the victim, particularly if that’s the attacker’s goal. Unarmed knife defenses range from difficult to incredibly difficult. Factors that really matter are: when the victim notices the attack coming, how close the two parties are, what angle it comes from and where it’s aiming, the decisiveness and aggression of the attacker, the ability of the victim to avoid freezing up under stress, and environmental obstacles. Generally speaking, the closer the attacker is and the later the knife is noticed, the harder it is to defend against.

When it comes to knife defense, though, expect to get stabbed. Any good instructor will tell you as much. Knife defenses are meant to reduce how many times you get stabbed or cut, to mitigate how bad those wounds are. If you’re really good or the opponent’s incompetent, it’s not impossible to get out of the attack unscathed, but \experts go into a live knife fight expecting to be cut or stabbed at least once, probably more than that. They just gamble on being able to tank a few wounds long enough to survive the situation. It’s why knife defense techniques are always a last resort; it’s why the first line of combative responses to a knife threat (not a knife attack, a threat) is, in my training at least, simply trying to get the knife far enough out of position (by hitting the knife hand) enough to turn tail and run.¹

The guy with the knife, assuming he isn’t braindead enough to stab himself, is always at an advantage. The unarmed defender is playing catch-up with no room to spare, probably while bleeding. A competent knifeman is at a huge advantage. Even if the attacker isn’t specifically skilled with a knife, if he has any combat experience or basic aggression, he has a really big advantage. Think of the knife as a danger multiplier: as he gets more dangerous without a knife, his danger level with the knife rises disproportionately higher. What can the defender do?

The first line of defense, once diplomacy fails, is to run. If circumstances don’t permit- obstacles, slower friends, injury, a faster attacker-, the next goal is to stop the attacker from drawing the knife. Fighting to control a sheathed knife is a terrible position for the defender, but it’s not as terrible as if the knife were unsheathed. The risk, of course, is that keeping the knife from being drawn probably puts your hands out of position for combat, probably exposes targets like your head to the opponent, probably messes with your footwork and prevents you from evading blows.

The next line of defense is dealing with an active knife attack. Here, there are three steps and an appendix. First, redirect. This means trying to minimize the damage inflicted by blocking or diverting the knifeman’s arm. By engaging with the arm and wrist instead of the knife, the defender receives bruises instead of wounds, allowing him to move the knife away from its target. The goal, of course, is to keep the knife from hitting the the defender at all. Failing that, the goal is to keep the knife from hitting anything immediately important. In entering a live fight, the defender should remember that even his best efforts may only get him less-bad wounds.

The second step is to control the knife. This means the defender needs to move in towards his attacker and remove his ability to decide where the knife goes. Generally, this means getting two hands on the weapon, pinning it against the attacker’s torso, or in some way overwhelming his arm’s muscles. Positioning is used to try and put the attacker in a place where his natural or preferred movement is awkward and weak (have somebody hold your hand behind you, knuckles to shoulder blade; try to get out of their grip. That’s not a practical position to force in a fight, but it gets the idea across).

The third step is to attack. The defender now has to in some way hurt the attacker. Preferably this means a fight-ending amount of damage- unconsciousness is best. In at least one knife technique, this means jamming the knife, still in their hands, into their ribs via your body weight (though this is also a way of forcing them to let go). If the attacker drops the knife, the defender should keep an eye on where it landed while finishing the fight. It’s not out of the fight if it can be picked up again. The defender may even take possession of the weapon; this is particularly recommended when dealing with multiple opponents.

The appendix to these three steps is the takeaway. Once some damage is inflicted (read: the attacker is reeling), the attacker may falter or present an opportunity for the defender to take the weapon for himself, though in a few circumstances the control is poor enough that a takeaway is added on with little to no attacks in preparation. These takeaways are fairly technical procedures (except the one that goes, ‘if all else fails, slam your knee into his hand’); humans are generally good at holding onto things, so the techniques to get them to stop require training to effectively use. Sometimes this will end with the defender holding the weapon, in which case he has the choice of using it, throwing it out of recovery range, or keeping it without using it. Often, even with a technique meant to take-and-keep, the weapon will drop, whether by a fumble or because the defender acted strangely or because the person doing the takeaway was interrupted by the attacker and had to return to actively beating him up.

Knife v Knife

Knife-on-knife combat is messy. Knives are not meant for defense. They lack the mass and size to block- not only do you need to be really accurate to block, incredibly difficult in combat. Further, many knives lack a handguard or crossguard, meaning trying to block always risks the hand. In a knife fight, of course, redirections and blocks are still possible. Both knife and body can be used in defense, usually by targeting the arm and wrist of the attacker. Nevertheless, knife combat is all about offense; everything I said about the likelihood of getting stabbed in a knife attack above goes for both sides, and both sides should know this, meaning restraint needs to go out the window to survive.

Knife-on-knife is all about offense, and that means the winner is whoever dies last. Both sides are going to get cut up if the fight lasts longer than the first exchange. The combat will be fast, it will be frantic, and mistakes will be easy to make and easy to miss. The ideal circumstance for the initiator of the fight, the attacker, is that he surprises and critically wounds his victim before he can draw his knife or use it. Failing that, the name of the game is to hurt the enemy while trying to avoid their knife or neutralize it, whether by redirection, disarming, injury, or by getting behind them (besides them can also work). Cutting the throat from behind will usually end the fight, so both sides probably want to get there, but it’s a hard place to reach. I say ‘usually’ because hastiness or a thick enough collar can foil the throat-cutting; the alternative is simply stabbing them a whole lot up under the rib cage.

In a knife-on-knife fight, if one side doesn’t want to hurt or kill the other, that side will lose. Of course, if somebody isn’t willing to hurt their enemy, they shouldn’t be using a knife in the first place. Don’t forget that lucky shots, environmental hazards, and bystanders can all be important parts of the engagement, especially as knife fights can easily end up on the ground or grappling, given the short range of the knife (slightly longer than punching, but stabbing doesn’t need a punch’s range; the fight will go faster the nearer the combatants are). Unarmed defenses will show up in these fights, often as ways to set up an offensive with the user’s own knife.

At the end of the day, knife-on-knife and knife defense while unarmed is where the knife is at an advantage, its home ground. Nothing’s certain, but the guy with the knife has a definite leg up (even if his opponent has the same advantage, evening things out a bit). Everything’s messy, and somebody’s getting stabbed (or cut). The knife doesn’t always have the advantage, however. We’ll talk about other knife matchups next week– swords, spears, and whatnot- so look forward to that.

God bless

Footnotes

1 – If you see somebody ‘debunking’ knife defense techniques by showing they don’t actually stop you from being stabbed, you have to realize they are wrong and right at once. They have this right: knife defenses will often fail to stop a determined attacker from stabbing you. They have this wrong: the point of knife defenses isn’t not getting stabbed (that’s hoped for, but unexpected); it’s making the stabbing survivable and getting away (possibly by neutralizing the threat, if they won’t let you escape).