Billy Jack, Green Beret Martial Arts, and Real Knife Fighting.

Knife Fighting: the Wrong Way and the Right Way

Billy Jack, stoic Indian with Green Beret Martial Arts training, was one of the first movie heroes to beat up bad guys with karate/kung fu/taekwondo/whatever.

Interestingly, I met a real Indian war hero who told me what it was really like. He was a chubby fellow from Northern California, and he had been a Navy SEAL. At least so he said.

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He told me that the Navy had been looking for people who were extra sneaky and mean, and they tried him and a few other Indians.

He told me they would sneak around the bush, sneak up on the VC, and kill everybody they could.

He said that one night a couple of his friends came back from a mission laughing. They had apparently snuck into a VC barracks and sliced the throat of every other man. They thought it was going to be a great joke when the survivors woke up and found that the men on each side of them had been killed.

And, he told me of a knife fight he had had when he was a teenager.

He got into it with some other good, old boy, and they were rasslin’ and stabbin’ each other when the cops pulled them apart and arrested them.

The other guy went to the hospital, where he might not make it through the night.

My friend sat there, waiting to see if he was going to be charged with fighting or with murder. And he wiped some blood off his shirt. Talk to the cops. Wiped some more blood off. Talked the cops. Wiped some more…”Hey! I’m bleeding!”

Apparently the other fellow had managed to stick him in the gut, and the fold of skin had compressed while sitting and the blood only seeped out, which made it look like he wasn’t really injured.

So he went to the hospital, the other guy lived, and he joined the Navy to avoid charges for assault and battery, which was the way they did things back then.

Anyway, I don’t know the truth of his story, he could have been telling me a big windy, but I do know something about knife fighting.

You can stab, or you can slice. Bad idea to throw, ‘cause there’s no smarts in throwing away your weapon. How you hold the knife depends on what you want to do, unless you go in without a plan. not a good idea. Everybody should be trained, and that training should have an idea for every possible situation.

Anyway, I’ve written a complete course, with a few hours of in depth video instruction, on how to handle knives and other bladed weapons. The course is called Blinding Steel, and it is available at Monster Martial Arts.

But the thing about knives is this: it is the most common weapon you will meet in a fight. After all, knives, for the most part, are legal.

You can carry a Bowie knife, or any large knife, even a machete.
You can carry knives openly, or even concealed.
The only knives you can’t carry are things like dirks and ballistic knives and daggers and stilettos.
You can’t carry knives that look like something else, like a tube of lipstick or a pen or something like that.

But you can carry a knife, and bad guys will resort to a knife as their weapon of first choice. After all, past a gun, which is illegal for the most part, in spite of all constitutional guarantees, a knife is easy, quick, and visually frightening.

But, if you study a real martial arts course on knives, like Blinding Steel, then you won’t have much to worry about. With Blinding Steel knife course you learn how to use anything for a weapon, and you can even take a knife away from some idiot and insert it where there isn’t much chance of getting a sunburn.

That’s Blinding Steel, at MonsterMartialArts.com.

Knife Fighting Course Bonus!

As everybody knows, I have the best knife fighting course in the world. It is called Blinding Steel.
Oh, you didn’t know?

Well, to help those who didn’t know figure it out, I sometimes offer a little freebie. Check out the Blinding Steel Page on Monster Martial Arts. Great freebie on an EMS folder. Good quality, weight, four out of five stars.
That’s a knife fighting course bonus at Monster Martial arts.

How to Take a Knife Away from a Slasher in a Knife Fight

You all know what a slasher in a knife fight is…he is the gangster who slashes the knife back and forth wildly. This motion is unpredictable, and it makes it hard to get past the blade. Try a kung fu or karate block and it’ll get you cut, he’s too fast for you to make judo work, and like as not he is coming in on you fast!

The first strategy that comes to mind is to wrap some sort of protection around your forearm. This will protect that limb and give you at least some sort of a shield. The problem with this fighting trick is that the time it takes to find something wrappable, or to remove your jacket and wind it around your arm, is time in which you are going to get cut to pieces.

So wrapping something around your arm, while it has its uses, isn’t really the most workable strategy when if comes to knife self defenses. It is pretty much stop gap. You will probably still get cut, and it segments your self defense moves into predictable movements: the wrapped arm is going to be used for blocking, and probably only for blocking.

Interestingly, there is a concept that does work for this type of combat scenario, and for figuring out knife fighting techniques. It is easy to play with without getting hurt if you use a training knife. You can also find yourself a red magic marker and wear white tee shirts if you really want to develop workability.

The concept is not to focus your eyes on the knife, but to look at the shoulder of the arm holding the knife. This is hard to do, because the concept of taking your eyes away from the weapon is difficult to do. There will also be people who hold that to take your eye off the weapon is the dumbest and most idiotic thing a knife fighter can do.

The fact is, however, you are not fighting an inanimate piece of metal, you are fighting a human being. The best place to look with the eyes would be the eyes, for ‘The eyes are the windows to a man’s soul. Thus, to look at the eyes would enable the fighter who knows what he is doing to see the thought behind the action.

In the specific situation of a slasher, however, focusing on the shoulder is actually superior strategy. As the hand whips back and forth, the shoulder does also, and the shoulder is slower and bigger and easier to watch. Thus, by concentrating your attention on the shoulder you can actually predict the change of direction and motion of the slasher.

Now, the best strategy, to be sure,is to not get into a knife fight, or just bring a pistol. But, times being what they are, thugs being what they are, this strategy should help you live to fight another day. And that’s the trick you use to survive a slasher in a knife fight.

You can pick up the best knife fighting DVDs in the world at Monster Martial Arts. There’s a free ebook available on the home page.