The saying is, the loser of the knife fight dies right there and the winner dies in the ambulance (or in the hospital, or whatever).

But that's assuming the other guy has a knife, too. Plenty of presumptive attackers go at others fisticuffs, either out of an overabundance of bravado, liquor, or simply because they're big dude who is used to beating up little dudes whenever they feel like it. Going at somebody who has a knife and is prepared to use it and if you don't know exactly what you're doing is not a smart move.

Yeah, but let's be real here. 99% of the empty sound bites like that one are pushed by people with zero training or experience. Hell, the remaining 1% is mostly made of people just blindly parroting something they learned that's safe to say.

Truth? Knives are fucking amazing weapons. You can't use them defensively really, unless they're massive. But they take training and practice if you want to use one against someone with training and practice. But a total noob with the will to fight can straight fuck up someone that wasn't expecting said noob to grab a blade and fight back, even if the attacker had a knife.

That bullshit about the winner waking up in an emergency room? It's bullshit. If you actually win, you're the motherfucker that walks away.

Yeah, yeah, don't get in fights you can escape. Of course. But you can't always escape, and I would argue that a good knife is better than most weapons against an armed assailant, even with little or no training. I might argue that a good steel baton would be better though. Almost as fast to deploy, and because they tend to be those expanding types, you'll likely have better reach, and that decides almost as much of victory conditions as aggression.

You bring your box cutter to a bowie fight, you're likely losing body parts, but bowie vs bowie, aggression and training begin matter way more.

And, hey, just to be clear, I'm not trying to rag you, just using the comment as a jumping off point to both vent a pet peeve and attempt to correct the usual ill informed circle jerk.

The problem with knives as self defense tools is the same as guns. You don't use them as a threat. You can't rely on scaring someone that's already doing something that justifies use of force. That's when people get mangled, not when they deploy their weapon in a timely manner. You can't wait until the attacker is already engaging you before you go for their throat (figuratively, it's not a primary target). You pull a damn knife, you go hard, or don't bother pulling it.

It's almost like that's your knife's intended purpose, cutting things. You know, rather than being used as a prybar, screwdriver, hammer, or chisel.