How effective is non firearm armed combat against trained unarmed combat

I would be willing to manually go after someone with a lug wrench - I would probably have bruising, and possible broken bones. Been there, done that. Knives are different, you can get tendons cut, potentially permanent damage to nerves, possible to bleed out if they get lucky enough to hit a major blood vessel. Tricky.

Yes and no. First rule of combat is shit happens. You can only carry so much ammo, and when that is gone you have a funky looking club, at least if you fix bayonnets, you have a pointy club.

My dad trained me to go for the nuts. Don’t start a fight, but be willing to end it fast and hard.

Exactly.

I come from the tail end of the time before snowflakes, us kids went out and got dirty, scrummed pickup whateverball games that started out touch/flag and ended up full tackle. mrAru admits that when he started in the Navy, being black gang, it was not entirely unusual to settle disagreements by shutting the door to machinery 1 and settling it with fists, and ‘blanket parties’ happened. I can remember being on a job site waiting for the contractor to finish a pour of a new footing for a machine shop, and the contractor being lazy and figuring a cute little white girlie from up north was a cupcake … [this was Reserve La in 1978] and didn’t know that he was screwing the job up just enough that the pad would have to be redone in a year or so. Since this was my 5th [or 6th, but pretty sure it was the 5th shop] construction to-do, I had a rough idea that it wasn’t going to go too well for the guy. I got a couple of my biggest guys and told them to back me up. I informed the guy that he was going to do the job right the first time because he wasn’t going to get paid to redo it next summer … smarmy asshole decided he was going to intimidate me, so I sucker punched him because nobody does the <poke in the chest, poke in the chest, lean in and look nasty> intimidation on me. Nobody pokes me and gets away with it. Also nobody expects steel toe black 1 inch heel pumps with a business suit <very evil smilie>

I have noticed one flaw with the average guy … they will push, and shove, and even swing a punch, but they rarely go for the balls. Girls tend to slap, pull hair, and kick. If you do something different, you can get that moment of surprise and make it work.

Months of trainging is more than enough to be able to cut with a katana. I teach Iaido, and did Kendo for many years. At our end-of-year dojo party, we get all the people from our club (kendo, iaido and jodo classes) together, and do tameshigiri. Even the people who have started kendo recently enough that they don’t even have gi and hakama yet can cut, and usually cut well. And as I point out every time we do this, even the “bad” cuts do enough damage that it would take the fight out of almost anyone. A two-inch deep cut won’t win you any trophies in a competition, but how many people would be okay with a two-inch deep cut anywhere on their body?

As others have said, and as I’ve often said in my classes, this is why we invented swords. They really do make a person a lot more dangerous. Knives aren’t quite so bad, but they’re still sufficiently bad.

I used to do FMA - Filipino Martial Arts (sticks and knives) for several years. As Shodan says, the trained weapons wielder ALWAYS has an advantage. (Well, unless you are talking about something goofy like a jointed staff.) And yes, the “magic marker” drill is telling. It would be unusual for someone to lose a knife fight w/ a single cut.

One aspect of most weapons training is knife-tapping and other disarming drills. Such techniques are really impressive, and tons of fun to mess around with. But I was always a “blunt instrument/unstoppable force” kinda guy. The effort required to master such disarming techniques is incredible - and then, the idea that you will be able to pull it off under stress against an unwilling opponent?

A thing many folk forget to train is how to carry and draw your weapon. Your knife won’t do you any good in your pocket.

A couple of things made me stop my weapons training.
-For one thing, my job takes me into many secure facilities. So it was too much of a hassle to remember when I could/couldn’t carry.
-Also, a knife should ONLY be used in a potentially fatal situation. You should only draw it in order to use it - NOT to show it. And I concluded that as I aged, spent less time in bars, in sketchy areas, out late…, the chances that I would NEED to try to kill someone were just infinitely remote.
-In order to effectively use a knife - or any other self defense method - you have to practice it. Over, and over until it becomes instinctual. I had a few injuries, which made me less interested in the type of training/sparring I enjoyed and considered effective.
-And personally, I wasn’t keen on how I perceived my training as affecting my mindset/personality. In some ways, it made me more content and secure. But in others, I think I was more suspicious, cocky…

Certainly it’s a bad analogy, because skill at chess is pretty much the only factor in winning at chess. Not so with any form of physical combat - physical conditioning, size, aggression, etc., are at least as significant as skill.

The traditional objection to “beginner’s luck” in combat is “he didn’t make the right mistakes”. Training against weapons is subject to that, no only because people with weapons don’t act like they do in kata, but also because actual fighting is different, especially against weapons. Losing a fight is one thing - losing a fight where you get stabbed is quite another.

You swim, you get wet. You fight, you get hit. You fight against a knife, you are going to get cut. And only the guy defending against the knife has to worry about getting cut. That takes some getting used to.

Depends on the weapon, but not as much as you might think.

Let’s just arbitrarily say six months of training with a given weapon. Six months of training in any reasonable system of knife fighting, or even just practicing stabbing a resisting opponent as in the Magic Marker process I mentioned, and the knife wielder is going to carve the average black belt into bite-sized morsels. Same thing with a sword, whether it’s SCA-type training or practice with a realistic saber (not one used in competition, one with some weight and mass). Even a half-hour a day practicing swinging a nightstick, or a lug wrench, is going to give enough practice to pound an unarmed opponent.

Real life is not like the movies.

Regards,
Shodan

Shodan has it right. Effective knife use is essentially, draw only when you intend to use it and then use it immediately - slash/slash/stab repeatedly at main body mass and any body part that approaches you - until you have opportunity to run away. Training essentially concerns how to draw, how to cut repeatedly/quickly, how to position multiple attackers, movement in different environments (enclosed spaces, different surfaces…), and most accessible arteries. Repeated training hones body mechanics, timing, footwork, etc. Footwork and a perception of what is within range are key.

But you are basically just cutting into meat, with the goal of distracting/deterring sufficiently.

Watch an Inosanto, Balicki, etc (sorry - I’m old and out of touch, but have trained w/ both) - they are true artists. And it is REALLY fun stuff to practice. But I think a fraction of what they do/teach is practical IRL.

Re: stick (or wrench/bat) - there are some basic mechanics as to how to wield effectively. For fun, search for some Dog Brothers videos. Good clean fun! :smiley:

For an average untrained person against the best of the best in MMA, I think you are right.

For someone with moderate training against an average black belt level person, then it could be more questionable, and other factors such as aggressiveness, type of weapon and a killer instinct could possible come in play. I’m too old for that kind of shit, but maybe someone younger with better natural skill and some training could do well against someone who isn’t as powerful / skilled / aggressive as Bas Rutten.

My bolding.

A couple of times? How does that happen?

Since you asked, the first one occurred during the summer semester of 1980 at Ohio State when I lived two houses down from all the south campus bars at 10th and High street. A local (i.e not a student) came out of the bars and stumbled over to my porch where a friend and I were drinking cheap/horrible beer (warm Cooks?) and he asked for one, we said sure but that the beer sucked. He then pulled out a single edge razor and held it to my throat and demanded money. I calmly informed him that he was at the wrong porch and that we were drinking warm cheap beer that we had bought with money made by selling our plasma from the clinic about two blocks away from the bars. He then seemed to accept my answer, took a beer and asked for something to eat. I said sure and made him a peanut butter sandwich while I called the police. Idiot The police were patrolling the bars on High Street like they ALWAYS DO and were there in less than two minutes. I was handing him the sandwich when they arrived and he tried to throw the razor into the bushes, they had him cold with the weapon and witnesses. I ate the sandwich while the cuffed him. He spent 6 months in the county for that one.

The second time is famously documented here.

Nitpick, but it was Al Pacino. jack Nicholson played fictional Irish mob boss Frank Costello in another Scorsese film, The Departed.

True. Although as I said previously, the guy armed with the knife has a much greater margin for error.

Yeah. I was thinking with a katana / sword because of my minimal kendo experience. That would be my first preference (for more aggressive person who wouldn’t freak out) with a couple of months of practice to learn how to deal with unarmed people. Looking at the people who have knife fighting training, then that would probably be second.

Oh. I remember now. There was a guy in my neighborhood. In high school, he got into a road rage incident and took out a baseball bat. The other guy took the bat away and messed him up pretty badly. The moral of the story is you gotta know how to at least not let the other guy become the armed person in the fight.

I don’t know anything about fist fighting but from what I understand, untrained people tend to miss more than connect so brass knuckles wouldn’t really be advantageous.