Reminds me of a story a friend told me when I was traveling through South America.
My friend was walking home late at night and a guy from another country (forgot which, but it was obvious from his accent) asked him for money. This exchange of course happened in Spanish:
"I have an iron" "what does iron means in your country?" "by iron I mean knife" and pulls out a knife "oh, because here iron means this" and pulls out a gun.
Then the robber just ran away.
I would immediately interpret that as "I don't need a knife (to absolutely fuck you up right now)" based on the oblivious completely casual tone and lack of any fear.
Which if you know anything about martial arts is complete bullshit and doesn't exist. If the dude has a knife, there isn't a "badass" alive that survives without huge injury, and death most times. There is a reason the saying "the winner of a knife fight dies in the ambulance" exists.
Which is why you end the fight before it starts. The greentext got lucky but by reacting oddly enough to make the robber pause then leaving they did the right thing.
I've been in a similar situation except I punched the thief before they drew the knike and then left. The fact he was obviously high as a kite probably helped. Ultimately, a knife fight between two sober, focused opponents, who are intending to kill or seriously injure will likely end as you suggested, but it the aggressor isn't actually ready to fight the fight can be avoided, or ends up much less lethal.
A knife fight between someone who has a knife and someone who doesn't just makes you an easy target. A 12 year old can stab a huge guy to death. Check the marker tests on youtube. A dude wears a white shirt / nothing, the 12 yo has a marker and is told to stab. Even with them not doing the "maniac stab" there is always a cut or stab that kills you. Lots of time tendons are cut which means you couldn't defend yourself. Lots of time someone nicks your liver. Sometimes a stab goes through an artery, through the heart, etc. The fact that your punch worked means you got extremely lucky and the other guy immediately stopped.
That's the thing, if the other guy actually means to harm you and has a knife, and you're within range, you're going to get injured or killed. If they just mean to scare you you might get lucky. Telling the two apart in the instant you have isn't always feasible, but you can usually tell if someone's impaired enough that you can get away. Yes, I got lucky, but it was an 'educated' choice as I'd seen him, rather unstably, coming.
I was taught that if you're faced with a potential fight you try to talk your way out of it, failing that you run, and only if you can't do that do you fight. If you have to fight you do so to end the threat as quickly and safely (for yourself) as possible.
Buddy... Don't be a hero. Don't look for a "maybe he won't". You were taught wrong. If a guy threatens you with a knife, run.
Having a knife will not protect you, you'll still die. The only thing that will protect you is distance.
What are the videos called? Searching for marker tests just gets me markers, adding "knife" gets me sharpening techniques, and adding "knife fight" just gets me music.
https://youtu.be/-s7E-PsMJRI?si=tP6HLeRMTtvsw30D try this one. It's called "there is no such thing as a knife fight" by Hein's approach to aikido. Am on mobile so can't find a shorter vid for you.
If you are an out of breath drunk and a dude who trains jujitsu tells you that you just let it go, I would find someone else to try to scare
Except again, no one trained in a martial art tries to be a hero when a knife is involved. The "Nike" technique is the only solution, you only fight when there is literally no possible way of running. Even then, throwing your wallet at them is prefferable to getting stabbed and dying.
1000%
My son has been taking martial arts for a decade now and this is almost always the final lesson of the day.
The easiest fight to win is the one you aren’t in.
The easiest way to win a fight is to avoid it.
The easiest way to avoid a fight is to run from it.
If you can’t run from the fight you get loud and make it uncomfortable for them.
If you can’t win that way kick a joint repeatedly until one of the above steps is able to work.
When in doubt fucking run.
Just uh, run your ass off and hope that you're faster. Running can be badass if you throw some parkour in or something, right?
Responding with a nonsense question or statement can apparently reboot an assailants brain momentarily, and make it easier to defuse or escape. I dont remember where I read it, but apparently if someone's trying to shoot or stab you you can scream something like "Chickens dont eat meat!" And the assailant will go " whats chickens got to do with this? Do chickens eat meat? Im pretty sure they do its just not really normal to feed them meat. But still, why are we talking about chickens?" And by then you're uppercutting him in the balls and legging it in the other direction.
It's actually very likely the guy didn't even have a knife. I had a mentally ill guy once approach me and my friend while we were hanging around in the street waiting for the store to open. He was rambling a bit but he mentioned he was gonna get his shotgun and kill someone (he didn't specify us, in fact I don't think he ever made a direct threat against us, but it was clear he was trying to scare us). My friend was sweating bullets but I just asked if he was hungry and gave him my bag of trail mix. He left, confused. I'm quite sure he didn't have a shotgun.
People are so unused to violent confrontation in the United States that just suggesting violence indirectly can be enough to scare them into giving you something. Anon's "mugger" was probably doing this. And they don't expect it to work every single time.
People are so unused to violent confrontation in the United States that just suggesting violence indirectly can be enough to scare them into giving you something.
Like a bag of trail mix?
Yeah, I've often wondered whether this guy "successfully" "robbed" me. Seems like a lot of semantics though, genuinely I just thought having some food would probably chill him out and make him leave, but you might ask, is this actually different from being robbed?
I guess the difference is when he was gone I felt good about myself.
At a bus stop, I was nearly beaten for wearing the wrong color shirt. This fella was told to hit someone wearing red and, in an attempt at easing their conscience, kept trying to find a reason to dislike me. Meanwhile, I’m just confused and apparently befriending him over our shared hatred of Russians and security guards and a mutual love of Islam. Unlike the greentext, my guy had the courtesy to at least apologize and explain the situation. Feels like a fever dream and I do not expect a single human being to ever believe me. There is no punchline, just my continued confusion. I still do not know how to feel about this.
Not even joking something similar happened to me.
A dude told me he had a gun, he was trying to rob me or something. I just told him that was neat, like "oh cool.. this dude is just into guns or something".
It wasn't till later I realized he was trying to rob me. He just stared at me like I was a moron and walked away...
I wonder how many potentially dangerous situations I've obliviously avoided thanks to being hard of hearing.
If it's a random stranger trying to talk to me on the bus, After I say "pardon?" thrice, I usually give up and default to random response noises like "uh huh", "hmm interesting", "that's a lot to think about", polite giggling, enthusiastic nodding, or "oh that's neat, good luck!" based on what I think they might be talking about.
I'd have no idea if I avoided anything nefarious because I have no idea what any of the conversation was about.
Though one time an uber driver asked me to marry him. I thought his English was just bad combined with my poor hearing, and he was telling me he was getting married soon, so I was saying "oh that sounds lovely". Fortunately he also found it funny when I realised what I'd accidentally agreed to.
Similar story:
I was in Medellin, Colombia, outside of the football stadium, trying to see where the rest of our friends were at before heading inside. A guy came up and was saying he was a big fan of one of the teams playing. He lifted his shirt to show me a really shitty tattoo of the team logo. I noticed there was a knife in his wasteband, but I was distracted because I was looking for friends. He asked for me for money and I casually said, "No, Gracias." and walked away. He started yelling at me with a lot of fun Colombian bad words. I was wondering why he was so mad and as I was walking away, I realized he was trying to threaten me with the knife.
There were a lot of people around and police all around us. Really ballsy on his part for even attempting something like that there.
If I did that in a different situation, I probably would have been stabbed.
I didn't quote that on purpose, as that was the only one in quotation marks.
edit: not only, all quotes have "I"s in them. mb. Still it was funny that it was forgotten on the last one Freudian slip, I say.
