Once you're in tight you can grab the guy and keep him close. Not for 30 seconds or anything, but long enough to get several seriously damaging, potentially fatal blows while his weapon is relatively much less damaging. Obviously the guy can get away, but it's more likely he'll absorb way more damage during the close-range stuff than he'll dish out in the transition from close to long range.

A random example: watch MMA, or any street fight really... most fights end up in grappling (in fact most fights end up on the ground, which is why jujitsu and other grappling based martial arts are so much more useful than other), I mean it's not given that once range is closed it will stay closed. But keeping someone 2-4 feet away when they are trying to get in close is probably singularly the most difficult thing to do in a fight. Belt requirements in various martial arts are routinely "stay on your feet against a grappler", etc. It's very difficult to maintain range.

I would. You simply cannot swing the bat back and forth fast enough. Even if you connect, I'm inside now. Once inside, it's over for the batter. O-VER.

The idea behind swinging and moving is the bat attacks keep the knife guy a distance. Obviously it is easy for me to say this is the case, just as easy in fact, as it is for you guys to say knife guy keeps charging. The final result is probably just a bunch of variance with the favorite being the more tenacious participant.

No dude the whole point is that the knife guy wins at least 3/4 times, haven't you been paying attention

Oh, of course. It's just that the knife man needs virtually no skills in the first place.

Notice that virtually any time skill has been mentioned here it's in regard to a batter being able to strike harder and a knife man being able to close quicker. People pretty much aren't even bothering to talk about the knife man's skills with the knife itself, because it hardly even matters. Once you're incredibly deadly, the move to incredibly deadlier doesn't matter much. Anyone with a knife is incredibly deadly, and that's plenty good enough.

It would also take a lot of coordination in a way people are not at all used to moving, be pretty ungainly regardless, and slow and easy to time.

Also, if your bat swings are not powerful, they're not going to keep anybody at bay. Not when there's the chance to stab you. Expecting a guy to stay at your range pretty much as long as you like while never getting in his own is pretty much expecting to fight a suicidal image. You can't expect a guy to fight in a way in which it is not possible for him to win. People just aren't that dumb -- even dumb ones.

Exactly. Since not getting inside is basically conceding your own death without a real fight to speak of, I'm charging in so I at least have a chance to live. And when I get there, until I'm unconscious, it's stabbing time. I really don't care what you do to me; I'm not stopping until I'm dead. And if you run, I chase.

Aren't as power =/= not powerful. Also, bat swings are intimidating to a potential attacker especially considering the average person probably cannot estimate the force behind a bat swing and determine that he can overcome being hit by it.

I am in no way saying bat is a lock, in fact I figure knife has the advantage, but I think it is important not to dismiss the bat as quickly as you guys are doing

No, the knife guy doesn't let the batter get in a free swing without charging unless he's ******ed, in which case there was no real fight anyway. He charges before the swing if he can, and if not, during the swing.

Bat guy does not get a free swing while knife guy poses at a distance. There is no charge to be done after the first swing. The gap is being closed during the first swing, and the bodies are already on top of each other or extremely close together. A stab or slash may already have landed. More are coming. More bat swings coming? Doubtful, and if so, they'll be coming weak and from a guy who's being cut up.

I'm not dismissing it. If I were dismissing it, I would be saying the bat, being so much slower than a knife, would be far easier to time, so the guy most likely to get off the first blow is the guy with the knife. And if that's the case, the first blow of the bat, if it comes at all, will be trivial, and the bat guy will be pretty much blown out of the water by either the first knife attack or all the subsequent knife attacks to come.

Guy with the knife IS much more mobile, fast, and deceptive than guy with the bat.

But I'm still assuming the guy with the bat gets off a very solid swing, enough to break an arm, maybe a rib. With the slower weapon, that's a pretty good score. The bat is being given pretty decent credit here.

Don't forget, too, that a knife is also intimidating. Neither party is likely to be feeling perfectly calm or all that great about what they're doing.

can the guy with the bat even charge the guy with the knife? seems like a much bigger gamble, and also much tougher to get a monster swing off

seems to me that the guy with the knife can always stay out of range(barring a small area) until he's ready for his charge

Are we in a fantasy world where getting a body part crushed does not hurt? If your arm is smashed, it would be hard to do anything but scream and run in the opposite direction.

On another note, a much more interesting question would be who would win: (1) two guys with a knife or (2) two guys with a bat (one wood, one aluminum)

omg! i head is about to explode.

This is a pretty naive post. To say that the person with the knife is MUCH more mobile and fast is wrong. Also, the bat person SHOULD NOT be using baseball type swings, he would be choked up, using vertical 45 degree angle shots that require the person with the knife to block their head. the second swing with the bat is almost immediate in this case, because one can swing from both sides quite easily.

A good vertical hit will not only shatter the forearm of the blocker, it has a good chance of connecting with the head. if you get in a headshot it is close to a lock, because the knifer will be seriously disoriented. if not, the second swing is already coming as the knifer lunges. bat man connects with head on second swing, as blocking forearm is [censored] and knife arm is attempting to stab.

knife stab, even to body, IS NOT GAME OVER FOR THE BAT MAN. people continue to live even with collapsed lungs and blood pouring out of them for quite awhile, especially with adrenaline raging. people survive with like 25 knife wounds often because knife deaths occur from loss of blood, not instantaneous death (unless heart or neck, which are near impossible).

taking stock - once knife has made first lunge, bat has broken knife forearm and also connected with knifer upperbody cleanly - either head and/or neck area. A knife wound has not taken down the bat man, on average, i'd say he is runnin at least 80% of his maximal ability.

the value of the bat is being able to immobilize / disorient your opponent easily. once this happens, headshots become easier and you can pummel someones skull in IMMEDIATELY. by contrast, it is inaccurate to suggest that a single knife stab, which is likely glancing rather than deep and piercing, is going to be instantly fatal. it may not even immobilize the bat man significantly. it should not even be difficult to keep the knife person at bay. if he charges, his momentum connecting with a bat swing will steal tons of the strength he had behind a knife jab. if he doesnt charge, bat man can continually keep the knife person at bay.

people in medieval battles routinely took serious wounds that only became overtly apparent after the fighting, unless it was a major arterie or organ. This is not counterstrike, knifes dont easily SINK into people like jello

Article: discusses fatality rates of knife wounds
http://timlambert.org/1993/10/knives-00000/
One excerpt:


"95% confidence intervals for mortalities calculated from (Annals of Surgery 179 pp 639) are 1%-2% for abdominal stab wounds"

News Story: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19570770/

"Police said the 40-year-old man walked into Delia's Place on Agnes Saturday night with three stab wounds in his chest."

It's not game over with a slash or stab to the tummy folks

I'm taking bat. I'm also not going to stand with my feet planted waiting for the guy with the knife to run at me nor try to backpedal away from an initial blow. I'm gonna move toward the guy with the knife and control how far I am from him instead of him lurking just outside my range and waiting for a spot to jet in. Also, you can get off a swing in under a second and, although a knife is faster, if I hit you then its gonna slow you down enough for me to reload and swing again. You're at least going to be knocked off balance even if you protect yourself with an arm. Once either fighter becomes somewhat immobile the fight is over. Killing the person won't be an issue at this point.

Your untrained fighters aren't going to know how to best deflect a bat blow and aren't going to have good enough balance or grappling skills to get and stay in close. The people who have taken martial arts or even the people who end up in street fights aren't in the norm. Most guys have a few fights as kids or teens and never fight during adulthood. Take 2 random guys and there's no way the guy with the knife can even execute the type of strategy you all are proposing while it is pretty easy for anyone to figure out that its best to swing a bat when they are just inside your range.

the thing that all the pro-knifers seem to be not considering (although I didn't read every post) is that they're just going to charge directly at the bat guy and the bat guy is going to stand there frozen. the bat guy, if he has any sense, is obviously going to put a last-second juke on the charging knife guy, which he should be able to gain a slight advantage from.

also, everybody talking about monster swings or whatever, I think the batter's strategy should be to choke up a few inches for the first swing and try to just put it in play to the the opposite field to land a dizzying/painful blow, then retreat to a safe distance if the knifer recovers. if the knifer is dazed more considerably, then choke down and swing for the fences.

bat, obviously. all of the martial arts dudes are saying knife because they have martial arts experience.

also, average adult has way more NATURAL ability with a bat. most people cut vegetables with knives, men have played baseball and have hit things with sticks their whole lives. just being more familiar around a bat goes a long way to victory

if the bat is such a lethal weapon why do cops carry batons, and greasers carry switchblades? HUH? ANSWER THAT!#$@#$@

Batons are smaller and lighter then a bat, and it's a lot harder for a greaser to keep a bat in his pocket all day.

I'm not sure if this has been brought up yet, as i'm not going to read through a second page of "I'm right," "No I'm right," but is everybody still assuming the bat-man is going to stand there and let knife-man charge in at him, only allowing the bat-man one swing? Because I feel like the bat-guy would have it alot easier if he went on the offensive. Take less powerful, but faster, swings, and aim it for the knife arm. Maybe throw a quick jab towards the face/chest after each swing to stop him from coming in on you. Keep him moving backwards/side to side, anything but inside towards you.

Do that for long enough, and he'll either eventually drop the knife, be too damaged to continue, or trip and end up fallind down, in which gase game over.

(Anybody who has any idea what they're talking about, is this plausible?)

Edit: ok, disregard basically this whole thing. i just saw like 20 posts were people discuss this idea.

Explain.

Wrong.

He would? I doubt it. Though I would be surprised if he didn't modify from the baseball stance and swing a bit, we're talking about what reasonably desperate people would most likely do, which is not come here first to take your instruction on how to hold a bat. A fair guess is that an American would handle the bat pretty similarly to the way he'd held bats whenever he's held them in his life.

The second swing being faster is nice, but not determinative of anything. Especially since the knifer's whole goal is to be sure you don't take that second swing -- at least if he can't be sure you haven't taken the swing. Nobody in this thing has free reign to do whatever he wants without interruption, neither batter nor knifer.

The head is an extremely mobile target, and a vertical swing with a baseball bat is a narrow approach that maximizes your chance to miss it. It also provides for an exceptionally slow recovery, as reversing the momentum and angle from a downward chop doesn't have leverage in its favor, nor is it a natural motion that people do a lot of, much less with speed or power. And forget deception.

You are giving batter's every move here enormous credit, some of it unwarranted.

No kidding, but good luck.

This is piling one fantasy scenario on top of another.

1. Batter's blow lands
2. Batter's blow is precise
3. Batter's blow lands with all or most of its force
4. Batter's blow is a freebie because knifer has not charged in to disrupt it and get into range for his own strikes
5. Batter reversing his swing after his first strike is neither slow nor telegraphic nor lacking in power, even despite it being an unnatural movement that has to fight momentum and potential balance problems
6. Batter, with a two-handed weapon, unbalanced weapon remains somehow faster than a man with a one-handed weapon that weighs virtually nothing
7. If batter doesn't hit his ideal target on his very first strike, he's guaranteed to hit it on the second
8. Batter is not disabled, hurt, seriously wounded, or even thrown off his balance or similarly disrupted by either knifer crashing into him, or his first blow either missing or landing, to the extent that his second swing is delivered as if it were in some kind of vaccuum and not even affected by his OWN actions?

Game is not over for knife man just because bat man owns a bat, either. People also survive vicious beatings.

Surviving 25 stab wounds is not the norm, so there's not that much point bringing it up. You forget we are assuming this is an ordinary fight, not one between superheroes or people on PCP. You also forget that this is a fight to the death, not a turf war or a bar fight.

Too much fantasy piled too high. Disallows anything disabling about knife wounds while cranking up bat damage to a complete freebie plus another magically fast, powerful, and deceptive perfect shot - at a minimum.

Good luck on the whole "fight" and "easily" concepts going together. Even more so when weapons are involved. What color is the sky in your world?

As Hemingway wrote, Wouldn't it be lovely to think so?

You are pulling this out of your butt.

I'm passing this by because it's getting way pointless.

Now at least we aren't completely in fantasy land. But we aren't saying anything definitive either.

1. Are these wounds caused by fights to the death?
2. Are abdominal stab wounds the only type of wounds a knife is capable of creating?
3. Are abdominal stab wounds even the most likely type of knife injury?

So a guy walks into a bar. Does he have a parrot? Are there a priest, a jew, and a rabbi near? One anecdote is like another, pretty useless.

Nobody was arguing it was, and it's not relevant to the discussion at hand, so you seem to be talking to yourself here.

On another note that comes through from your post, you give virtually no credit to either the knife or the knifer, not even in his most obvious advantages, like speed and deception. But the one I'm here suggesting you give more credit to is simply the number of wounds that a knife can create in just a few seconds, and how little leverage, balance, and strength are required to make them. A guy with a knife and a guy with a bat are at nowhere near the same speeds. If you don't think you can be stabbed or deeply slashed several times in a single second, you're mistaken.

Your understanding of speed, initiative, and momentum are very deeply off.

Holy [censored] Blarg, that was a long post, even for you.

Still lobbying for video trials. Step up, people.

How come noones taken their friends out and filmed a fake deathmatch yet? Use a dildo as a knife and something batlike but non-incapacitating as a bat. Put the video on youtube and we'll hopefully get a good idea of how fast knifeman closes and how severe a blow the batman has time to get off. Don't know what you should use as a bat that behaves as a real bat but still doesn't knock your friend out though...

So, simply because you say so, you are going to win the battle for distance, which is the most important part of this fight? Overconfident much?

Also, if you are backing up with a bat, you are no threat, and it is an instant charge toward you.

Oh really? Nah. Where is your body at this point at this point compared to the knife guy's? At anywhere near good range for a bat swing, or is he right up in your face? With a knife?

You for sure aren't stabbed or slashed when you come together, disrupting your second swing like the knifer's second stab or slash is disrupted? Nor knocked off balance yourself?

Good chance. However, you don't need much balance for a stab and virtually none for a slash. Batter is the one who desperately needs distance, balance, and time to wind up.

Agreed. And if knife guy is on top of you, being immobile is your worry, not his. If you can maintain not just distance, but an ideal distance, an exceedingly hard thing to do in a fight, then knife guy's loss is automatic. But that would be a pretty ideal scenario. Knife guy crashing into you, wounded or not, would be a more expected one. At which point your bat becomes all but useless.

Agree on deflection, but it won't always matter much.

On staying in close, that's not what matter's it's getting in close. Staying in close is easy. On getting in close, anyone who can charge can do it -- ideally you'd like a bit of timing or even some deception, but jamming forward is within anyone's powers.

True, depending where you're from. For purposes of this discussion, it's effectively true.

Running in doesn't really take much strategy at all, especially when NOT running in is basically suicide for the knifer. It's not even like he has a reasonable other choice. It's run in or die. So ... how unlikely is it that anyone is going to choose to at least attempt something other than death?

I will give you, as noted elsewhere above, that beginning fighters tend to do a lot of dodging and not be too aggressive sometimes. A fair amount of knifers will probably choose the wrong strategy, of waiting for a "miracle opening" while the batter gets his bat control and psychological dominance more and more in line and eventually swats him.

Yep, batter's strats are few. A batter won't be tremendously far off if he sticks to any of the likely ways of doing things. A knifer, as agreed above, can make a disastrous choice pretty instinctively, if he's not thinking much.

I know. Whew. It was a gigantic post I had to respond to, and eventually I just skipped some out of exhaustion.