Contemporary European Knife Fighting

Knife carrying is common place in Europe and whereas in America you’re over five times more likely to be killed with a gun than a knife, knives are more likely than a gun to be used during homicides, robberies, assaults and rapes in Europe. You’re also far more likely to be the victim of a knife crime on the streets of Europe than you are on the streets of America (over three times as likely in the UK). So if America has a gun culture; Europe has a knife culture.

Knife fighting is an everyday reality on the streets of most major European cities. London, which proudly boast to be the knife fighting capital of Europe, has several comtempory knife fighting systems. Most of these systems are basic and don’t have names and learned on the streets where they were developed  but they’re still a lot more effective than the Asian knife fighting martial arts popular in America.

The Stanley knife was the trademark tool of football hooligans and Skinheads during the 80s because it was non-lethal but it has virtually disappeared from the streets of London. Now the knives of choice are combat knives or folding knives and the number of fatal knife fights have risen as a result.

Black street gangs although usually most associated with knife fighting in London are nowhere near as proficent as the Turkish, Kurdish and Albanian gangsters and are also less successful gangsters. They cheap bastards carry kitchen knives and tend to attack toe-to-toe, trying to grab or hold off the adversaries attack arm or lean against them and stab upwards to the groin, stomache or under the arm or laterally in the side, arse, leg or back.

Although, there are some quite effective knife fighting styles in London, in my expirence, you get a better class of knife fight in Rome,  Barcelona, and Palermu. Knife carrying has been part of Italian culture since the times of the Julius Caesar’s assassination and the use of the dagger was taught in Italian fencing schools throughout the Renaissance. Both Fiore Furlano de’ Liberi da Premariacco’s fencing treatise, Flos Duellatorum, written in 1409, and in Achille Marozzo’s fencing treatise, Opera Nova, written in 1536, have sections on stiletto fighting.  But it wasn’t until the 18th Century when public sword carrying became unfashionable that the stiletto became the weapon of choice on the streets of Italy. In the Opera Nova, Marozzo recommends the spada e targe (sword and square convex buckler) as a practical weapon for defence on the street, if you’re carrying a sword and buckler, you’re not going to be pulling a knife on someone.

There are many contemporary Italian knife fighting systems, as well as the classical styles. La scherma di pugnale siciliano (Sicilian dagger fighting), which I learned as a boy, is widely known in all nine provinces of Sicily; it is designed for both duelling and street combat and is at least 200 years old. The video below gives a slow enactment of a Sicilian stiletto fight.

Although Sicilian stiletto fighting was originally designed for use with a fixed blade stiletto, it’s now more commonly used with the Milano switchblade  (usually no more than 16 cm), and is characterised by the stiletto dance. The video below gives a dramatic demonstration of the Sarausa style but the techniques are the same as the ones used in Caltanissetta.

I was also taught scherma di pugnale militare (military dagger fencing) as a boy by my Grandad and then again at SMiPar (CeAPar), when I served in the 186° Reggimento Paracadutisti “Folgore”.  The Italian military dagger fighting system was developed during WWI from existing Italian systems and the refined for war. It was used by the Arditi, the first modern special force, and was used and refined again during WWII, where it was especially associated with the Folgore and the 1939 model pugnale da paracadutista assaltatore. The Italian Comando Operativo Forze Speciali still uses a version of the knife: the Extrema Ratio 39 09 knife. The the Arditi, (the 9º Battaglione d’Assalto Paracadutisti) now known as Il Nono or “Col Moschin”, are still extensively trained in knife fighting and use the Col Moschin knife, which is supposedly the best fighting knife in the world… and is defintely the most fucking expensive.

The system is simpler to learn that the Sicilian one because it is less sophisticated but it is still effective. The basic fighting stance is a crouch, with the blade hand forward.