Jon Fitch gets in a Knife Fight

[SifuJason]

Combining escrima plus BJJ can be very, very valuable. I once taught a "how to bring a knife to a grapple fight" seminar on just these things. However, I have found that knowing one, and not the other, can often result in a very poor outcome.

Also, instead of shock knives, a cheap alternative is to use training knives coated in chalk. No sting, but you easily see who gets cut without a giant mess/need for new shirt afterwards.

[SifuJason]

So my thoughts are.
Do you throw out your primary martial art due to the risks involved with having a non knife focused defence. Say take up a knife specific as a side and hope that the lack of experience is countered by the martial art being weapon focused?
Or
Tweak a bit of knife focus into what you do hoping that the familiarity of fighting in that style overcomes the tactical mistakes you may make?

I have done a bit of RBSD and have played with rubber knives and I pulled a box cutter off a guy once. (But I did have help)

Dealing with knives is mostly about core principles (bone shields, thumb-bed control, clearing the centerline, etc). Good, quality martial arts of any form can help provide a lot of the mechanics and timing, along with the follow-up techniques, needed to defend against a knife, once that additional set of principles is learned.

[Punisher]

This was the initial weapons training. Keep in mind that vast majority people we deal with have never been in any sort of fight what so ever. So generally the initial part of any new training in MACP is to build a mindset. So by this point we usually just got people comfortable with grappling or just engaging another person unarmed. We start with introducing things and building upon it. Knife vs unarmed no strikes, knife vs unarmed strikes allowed, knife vs knife, knife vs M4 (you went black), etc.

I figured as much. The other thing I realize that the situation that soliders are likely to face require different techniques and tatics than your average cilvillian. For personally self-defense I just need to go home safe. Killing, disarming, or subduing the opponent isn't required for me to "win" and I have the added luxury of being able to just run away I see the opportunity.

[Team Python]

Combining escrima plus BJJ can be very, very valuable. I once taught a "how to bring a knife to a grapple fight" seminar on just these things. However, I have found that knowing one, and not the other, can often result in a very poor outcome.

Also, instead of shock knives, a cheap alternative is to use training knives coated in chalk. No sting, but you easily see who gets cut without a giant mess/need for new shirt afterwards.

Agree with this......I have applied my BJJ and FMA skills and come up with some easy but effective techniques for knife defense. I use what I call a Wrap and the Russian Grip for controlling the arm that has the knife. By using these two techniques I can control the arm and not lose it while I going for some sort of submission or strike. Of course we practice all newly designed techniques during sparring sessions to see what works and what does not. If any techniques that I can not pull off during sparring will not work in a real fight so we don't use anything that has not gone through trial and error.