Knife fights are like venereal diseases: they should be avoided as much as possible.
Knife fights are cool in movies. I get a little pang of sadness when I see two characters in a movie pull out Bowie knives and spend the next ten minutes slicing each other in the woods. It's pretty much the only reason I'm rewatching The Hunted (because it's definitely not for the writing).
I've spent a fair amount of time studying knife fighting in my adult life, and almost every time I pick up a training knife with my brother and we turn to disarm and turn, I think, "Oh my God, knives are terrifying." The reality of a knife fight is brutal and disgusting and nothing like a scene from a Tommy Lee Jones movie, a Stallone movie, or even a science fiction movie. There's a lot more fluid involved in real life, and nothing ever looks cool. Most things happen too fast to not look horrific.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Okay, first reason why you're an idiot for thinking a knife fight would be cool .
You're going to get cut
Have you ever seen people fistfighting? Or boxers sparring? Do you know what you're really watching?
Two people being hit repeatedly.
Now imagine knives in their hands. No matter how good you are, it's almost impossible to avoid getting hit at least once in a fight, unless one of you is really drunk.
It's the same rule for knife fights. You're in very close proximity to another person, which means they don't need to be a good shot, or even fast enough to reach you with a knife. If you have one knife and they have another, you're both about to start painting a lot of red, and all it takes is a superficial cut to the tendons in your wrist or the arteries in your neck, arms, and legs to leave you with permanent or fatal damage.
This is really really disgusting
Since cuts are inevitable, blood becomes a major factor because it doesn't stay in one place.
Two people moving around a lot while bleeding means blood splashes, and you're going to be front and center in the aquatic spectacle. You're going to have each other's blood on you, which means whatever they have in their blood will end up on your face, in your mouth, on your clothes, and in your own cuts. Even if you survive the encounter, you won't just be going to the hospital for stitches. You'll have to pass every test imaginable.
If you want to get a better idea of how all that liquid will fly, fill a milk jug with water, dye it red, and then prick it with a knife. Also, be sure to keep a napkin handy.
This is a bad way to ruin a good knife.
Some knives are better than others for combat. This is partly due to what tactical knives are for (but that's not their only purpose, despite popular belief). But even if your knife is designed for that, it's going to get damaged and covered in blood, pus, and whatever other weird stuff is circulating inside a person. And if you thought water was bad for steel, try leaving some human plasma on that carbon blade for a while and see what happens.
Of course, you can always clean the knife afterward (if you're still conscious), but there's another danger: human bones. If you're lucky (and being involved in a knife fight is a good sign that you're not lucky at all), you'll just chip the blade and move on.
But there's a good chance your knife will get stuck in bone, and if you have a thin tip, there's an even greater chance it will break (incidentally, the possibility of a knife tip breaking off inside you is also a very good reason not to get into a knife fight). It's just that you're both better off avoiding the situation altogether.
This is a delicate legal area
It makes perfect sense that if someone attacks you with a knife, you can defend yourself with a knife. It's part of the American ideal (or was) that when you get punched, you should fight back, or stab. Or shoot a package. Or launch missiles in return.
But as with anything in single combat, the consequences are never as simple as confrontation. We may be in America, but we're still in a civilized society. You have to justify your actions. If you survive a knife fight and the other person doesn't, you have a dead person to explain. Even if they only end up hospitalized, you'd better hope you have witnesses to back you up when you say it was self-defense, or you'll be in for a barrage of questions centered around the fact that you're still standing while the other person has their stomach stitched up in intensive care.
Don't be a wimp; just run away.
This isn't to say you should never defend yourself with a knife, but you should always consider it a last resort. You're not Rambo or Donnie Yen. You're just a bunch of flaccid organs piled on top of each other, pumping away, praying you don't do something stupid that will tear them apart. Because your organs really do work better when they don't have a big knife hole in them.
That being said, there are a few basic rules that can help you minimize your risk of injury. For example, keeping your elbows on the ground and close to your body, holding the knife in your front hand to maintain distance, etc. But there is only one tactical trick that can guarantee your safety every time: flee.
It doesn't sound very glamorous, but if you think about it for a moment, feel the wind in your hair, the blood flowing freely through your veins, all your organs functioning properly, you might even discover that you actually enjoy running away from a knife fight. And if you find yourself thinking about it with regret, take a moment to appreciate the fact that you can still think about it.
