Expect to Get Cut in a Knife Fight

There are loads of knife fighting myths but none more monumentally stupid than “expecting to get cut”.

Lets have it right, you should never go into a knife fight expecting to get cut because if you do, guess what? You will be. Expectation leads to acceptance, and if you go into a knife fight anticipating getting cut, you stop try to avoid it. Paul Vunak’s demonstration is a good illustration of what it means to get cut.

Now bear in mind, if you can be cut you can be stabbed. A slash is bad enough but stab can be a lot worse. Even a minor knife wound can send you into shock or be immediately incapacitating. And even if they don’t, it doesn’t mean that they won’t be fatal. When old Julius Caesar went to the wrong toga party and ended up getting stabbed 23 times by a gang of sixty dagger-wielding senators, he didn’t die instantly. He managed to catch hold of Casca’s arm and even managed to do a runner before he tripped on his toga and fell arse-over-tit. But even if if he did get away, he would still have died because it was the second stab wound that killed him.

The cardinal rule of knife fighting is to avoid the point of the enemy’s dagger!