This happens all the time in pirate movies but basically a pirate armed with a knife confronts someone else with a melee weapon. The pirate approaches the other person and starts passing the knife between their left and right hand back and forth until finally doing a one handed slash against the other person.
Is this an actual fighting technique, an intimidation tactic, or completely fictional and only is there to make a movie fight look cool?
I’m not a knife fighter, but seems like a spectacularly bad tactic.
I did fence at school. You turn sideways to provide the least target, keep the foil in one hand and attack quickly, either to get a hit or disarm the opponent.
Tossing the knife between hands exposes your much wider torso to your opponent, and opens you up to disarming, or a fumble which would also disarm you.
As I said, I am nowhere near an expert but I would rather keep the knife in my dominant hand, blade downwards so I can use that hand to both punch and slice. Slicing is easier than stabbing, and stabbing carries the risk of the blade getting stuck.
Might have some intimidation effect, but in terms of the actual mechanics of combat, as scudsucker said, it sounds terrible.
In the single knife ‘fight’ I was in (excluding practice using bated training blades) a guy pulled out a balisong and started flipping it open and closed while saying the usual cliched threats people make when they want to peacock instead of fight. Since I wasn’t armed with anything but the beer in my hand I was waiting for him to actually attack with my ad hoc plan to splash the beer in his face and clock him in the head while trying to not get cut but I didn’t get the chance because he flipped the knife closed on his fingers, squealed like a little girl, and dropped his weapon. I took the opportunity to be valorous and made my speedy exit, pausing only to set my beer down at the threshold. This event reinforced the lessons from my edged weapons instructor:
- Don’t draw a blade unless you are going to use it.
- Don’t ‘fight’ with a knife; if you are going to use it, kill.
- In real blade combat, one guy goes to the hospital and the other to the morgue.
As for tossing a knife between hands for intimidation, it makes no sense. It’s not actually intimidating, prevents you from being able to attack while the weapon is in transition, and offers substantial opportunity to drop your weapon or cut yourself. The only reasons for doing this would be to free that hand to draw another weapon or grapple, or because that arm is injured or trapped, and even then you would want positive transition instead of tossing it in space.
Almost everything you see about blade combat in movies and t.v. for both short and long blades is completely wrong, done to appeal to some fight choreographer’s notion of cinematic fighting, and will get you retired with extreme haste in the real world. Real blade combat between trained fighters is quick, messy, and confusing because it is over so quickly and both parties are likely covered in blood. The brief hotel room attack in Quantum of Solace is about the most accurate knife combat between trained fighters I’ve seen in film, with two guys doing everything they can to survive, grappling, kicking to get distance, grabbing improvised weapons, and even then probably goes on for way too long without major injury.
Stranger
Have you seen me in profile?
mmm
I think the OP has been answered, so speaking a bit more broadly now…
I think movies are gradually improving though. The cliche of 10 minutes of two guys playfully tinging their swords together (as if they are morris dancers), interrupted only by someone getting a light cut that angers them, is getting less common.
I think audiences are ready for a more realistic depiction of sword combat, and indeed swords taking a backseat to polearms in historical dramas.
If you were Mean Mr. Ketchup, no one would know you were ever in a knife fight. Or, they’d be constantly rushing you to the hospital.
It’s like licking your knife blade (or showing off your nunchuck skills). Pure silly puffery.
I’m also not a knife fighter but I feel it could be a useful tactic.
Knife fighters use different defensive tactics based on whether their opponent is right handed or left handed. By switching your knife between hands, you’re forcing your opponent to defend against both possibilities, which prevents him from doing a complete job on either one. When you see an opening, you can quickly switch your knife to the appropriate hand and attack.
But would you toss it, or just move it quickly between hands (or drop it one into the other, ala the MCU’s Winter Soldier)?
No, no, and no.
I really enjoyed Captain America: The Winter Soldier for the character development, the plot reversals, Henry Jackman’s menacing score, the stunt casting of Robert Redford as the heavy behind a vast global conspiracy, and upending the entire premise of S.H.I.E.LD. as a benevolent paramilitary organisation, but literally nothing about any combat in that movie should be taken as remotely practical or realistic.
Stranger
Well, other than the one in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
I am not a knife fighter. But i am ambidextrous, and i whittle. I know my way around knives. I often change hand to get a better angle for something precise, too.
Maybe it’s just because i am doing precision work, but it takes a fair bit of time to change hands. Seconds. That seems like it could be a long stretch of vulnerability in a fight. I doubt knife fighters change hand often.
It seems a good way for people to stand over your dead body and say, “Yeah, but it looked cool.”
The Austrian-American opera singer, Ernestine Schumann-Heink, was rather buxom.
One time she was trying to move through the orchestra but knocked over a few things and was having difficulties fitting through.
The conductor suggested she try moving sideways.
She replied: « Mein Gott! I haf no sidevays! »
Tossing it seems silly. However a transfer might be necessary if the holding hand is injured during a confrontation. Or supporting one hand with the other, two handed.
I had a lesson in street knife fighting from an expert. He had me practice changing grips in single hand and emphasized keeping a secure grip at all times. Basic fight tactic: attack their weapon hand first, then work your way up the arm. This is for a scenario with just 2 people both armed with edges rather than something else. Or you have an improvised weapon such as a beer or really anything you can grab in that moment of need.
This teacher used to fiddle with plastic ware at the dinner table until I got super creeped out by the obvious ease with which he was handling something so harmless as a plastic butter knife.
Reminds me of the joke about the best way to win a fight with nun-chucks: put them down in front of your opponent and hope he tries to use them
well, there’s another topic Stranger is expert in! 
Basically what he said. I trained various FMA styles w/ stick and knife for several years, and NEVER was switching hands mentioned.
Many folk who practice/study knives do all manner of impractical knife tapping, disarms, and such. Really fun to practice, but near impossible to pull off in the moment.
I’m not an expert on knife combat by any stretch of the imagination; I did about three months of supervised training with small blades 3-4 times a week, which is just enough to realize how really dangerous bladed combat is. Anyone claiming to be an expert who doesn’t have multiple scars on their hands and arms is just bullshitting.
Regardless, tossing a knife from hand to hand is an obvious no-no. Pretty much the first thing you learn is an appropriate grip (depending on style and type of knife) and how to maintain that grip at all costs. You should learn and practice the basic techniques with either hand, but there is no switching hands in mid-combat except in exigent circumstances (injured arm, dropped knife).
I don’t doubt this is what you were taught and there are a lot of people who think this is a good tactic but your real goal is to stop the attack; to that end you want to control or trap the weapon hand but you want to disable the arm or incapacitate the attacker rather than focus on the weapon. If you are facing someone with two weapons, you want to get to the outside, or better yet just get away because there is almost no chance you are going to be able to control both arms and disable the attacker without getting slashed or stabbed.
Stranger
I know nothing about knife fighting, but if I ever found myself in a knife fight I’d do the same thing I’d do in a gun fight - aim for center mass and keep on trying to hit him until he goes down. I’d stab him directly and repeatedly in the chest and stomach and hope he doesn’t hurt me more than I hurt him. As Patton said, when in doubt, attack.