Hank Reinhardt's Book of Knives: A Practical and Illustrated Guide to Knife Fighting (8 page)

A counter-cut when opponent is within reach

There are tricks you can employ to confuse your opponent’s ability to judge distance. One is to hold the knife very close to the blade.

Deception: at first, hold your knife close to the blade, later extending it to confuse your opponent.

If you can safely do so, make a couple of passes that fall short. (Your opponent will probably assist you here.) Then shift the knife forward until it’s extended as much as possible, and attack. This will add to your reach and his consternation . . .

There’s an old fencing trick that can be adapted here, as well. Since the lunge is made from the left foot, draw the left foot close to the right. Your opponent will judge your effective distance from your normal position, but when you lunge forward, your reach will be greater than he expects.

Old fencing trick.

I once taught a judo and self-defense class at a YMCA that had a fencing team. One of the fencers was interested in knives, so we made some dummy knives to work out with after class. He was good at fencing and had won several matches in the Southeast. He moved beautifully and with frightening speed. When he lunged, he had about a 30 percent chance of landing a good hit. When he failed, however, he would have been crippled or killed.

For a long time, he stubbornly believed he could get through with a lunge 90 percent of the time. But he hadn’t seen what I had, and didn’t know some of the people I knew. We kept records and he was finally convinced.

The problem is that the left hand can snap down and block a lunge, leaving you completely open to a counter.

Left hand snaps down and blocks your lunge, leaving you open to a counter.

Or else the right hand, holding the knife, can drive the point into your arm, causing you to slice your own forearm as you move forward.

Fencing lunges are always preceded by some fake or series of attacks designed to bring the opposing sword out of line so that the thrust can reach home. This isn’t possible with a knife, so the thrust and lunge have to be made as a single movement, with speed as the keynote for success. It just doesn’t work all the time.

To sum all this up, I would advise you against lunging. You’re safer staying with cuts to the arm and leg until you can move in and finish your opponent off safely.

Feints are the order of the day. If you can make an opponent think you’re attacking in one area while your real goal is elsewhere, you can land; and that’s what you want to do. A fake cut at the head, followed by a drop down to the leg for a slice, sounds difficult and time consuming, but you’d be surprised how quick it is and how well it can work.

One of many possible feints: a fake cut at the head, followed by a drop down to the leg for a slice.

There’s no way I can list all the possible feints that can be used in knife fighting. To list those I know about would be simply to not list those I haven’t thought of. The most important skill in combat is the ability to think and there is no better way to practice that than to try developing your own feints.

Parries usually require the left arm, but you need to learn to use both arms in blocking. Not everyone is right handed and the lefty with any experience at all will have the advantage of being used to facing right-handed people. But never forget, if you’re right handed and find yourself facing a left-handed opponent, that if switching hands works for you, it can also work for him. A good trick is to keep the left hand clenched into a fist, as this really adds a positive force to a block and also keeps your fingers out of the way of the knife. It’s rather disconcerting to suddenly lose a finger.

I’ve not said much about punches, not because I intend to ignore them, but because I don’t want to make a big issue out of throwing one. If you can hook or jab, do so. Just remember he has a knife. A block can get you cut at the same time.

Back when I was young, in the days before the advent of karate, you could kick a man rather easily. Most people simply did not expect a kick. They were too used to fists to think about feet. Alas, such is not the case anymore. Nowadays people expect kicks.

High kicks are generally worthless. To start with, it takes a lot of practice to learn how to get one to land properly. Even then they are just too slow. They are also easy to block, and when blocked, leave the kicker in a dangerous position.

Now, you may disagree with that statement, particularly if you’ve had some martial arts training. I suggest you look at a full contact karate match some time. The rules require contestants to deliver so many kicks per round. What generally happens is that the opponents run out, give the required number of kicks, and then proceed to beat the hell out of each other.

Low kicks can be useful. You can deliver one quickly and with devastating force. A kick to the knee is especially painful, and if done right, can cripple someone for life. The groin, although easier to protect by shifting the body, is also a fine fight-stopping target.

A fake attack followed by a kick and then a real attack is a generally reliable strategy. You can modify it to a fake kick and a real attack, or to any combination you like. But remember:
a good, low kick, not going any higher than the groin
is an effective weapon.

Throwing things—dust, rocks, change, just anything—at your opponent is a time-honored gimmick and, as gimmicks go, okay. But it’s overrated and very familiar. A good, cool fighter can slide aside, duck, and recover to meet your attack. And if your opponent is wearing glasses, well, what’s the point of throwing dirt in his face?

Pepper was supposed to be popular at one time and when I roamed the streets, I heard about people carrying it, but I never saw anyone use it. The trouble with gimmicks like that is that everyone had heard about them and it’s hard to surprise someone with something he knows about.

Of course, what goes for rocks and pepper goes for the trick of flicking a cigarette in a man’s face. But there is a little-known gimmick that can be added to that one: wetting the end of the cigarette before you flick it. If the wet end hits, it has a tendency to stick for a moment, which can hurt and be distracting.

If you want to throw something, look for a brick. Better yet, look for half a brick. Grab it, get in close, and smash.

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So far, we’ve discussed fights where the knives are of relatively equal length. But what can you do when you have only your three-and-a-half-inch blade and your opponent pulls one that’s eight to twelve inches long?

To put it bluntly, you have a real problem in that case.

Against a longer knife, you can’t really go for hand cuts. It’s just too easy for him to cut you before you even reach his hand or arm. This is just as true for attacks to the body. By the time your blade has reached his chest (assuming you’re both pretty much the same height), his blade has already gone into you five to nine inches.

One of my cardinal rules in knife fighting is to avoid getting cut, and I advise you to do the same. But if you find yourself unable to escape a situation like this, there are some things you can try. I wish I could tell you they work all the time, but they don’t. If you do well the maneuver I’m about to describe, you probably have a 40 percent chance of success. If you do it very well, you can even your chances.

First, let me elaborate a little on hand cuts. When you’re fighting with a knife the same size as your opponent’s, you can attack at the hand from a high position, cutting downward then dropping the wrist and flicking the knife around so that you actually cut from the inside.