"There is no perfect knife grip, just the best one for the moment."
- Dan Insosanto
Well in a perfect world?
You'd have a double-edged knife and the whole issue would be moot.
Next you would have a single-edged, knife that had a half an edge or 3/4s of an edge on the "second-side, be street-legal, so it is very like a double-edged knife, anyway.
There is a small minority of knife people who are brainwashed into this idea full-time. One guy calls it the "point shooting of knife-fighting"...(WHAT the Hell?) and they love this edge-in thing. But they sacrifice all the edge-out slashing that is so useful, and way more probable. But this minority is utterly brainwashed into its superiority. For years now I have heard knife guys talk with frustration about the blinders these people wear.
This reverse grip, edge-in grip, is usually used to pull people into you, so you are in essence pulling a knife attacker into you?
In Level 3 of my Knife/Counter-Knife course is the subject matter module Reverse Grip slashing and in it I discuss and show the 3 big applications of the "edge-in people" love to use. (because it can work and because it can also work with a double edge knife. I cover the moves and I announce that there is a small minority of people who over-emphasize the edge-in idea.
Needless to add for over 15 years now I have teaching the four "counters to common blocks and contacts" and the first one of them is "cutting the block," (something I learned form the Inosanto people in the 1980s.) With minimum wrist movement and practice you can cut that limb from a reverse or saber grip! Don't need no new special model knife! But if its sharp only on one side? Sometimes you can't get the slash. There are a few combinations of arm/knife contact. A double-edged, or almost double-edged, knife is more versatile. And of course strike as much as possible, as we train for, for over 15 years, "Support Hand Striking and Kicking - the "while Holding" series shown from Level 2 through 7. So cutting the limb and striking the person as inside steps of combat scenarios are great ideas. Very old. Well before me and South Narc.
Remember, God's First Knife, hidden in the bushes at the Garden of Eden was the simple, versatile, double-edged, "commando" knife. Everytime someone invents a new shape knife for some one-trick pony move, my stomach acid gurgles. Everyone's should. Jeez, does every self-proclaimed knife guy need his own, expensive knife?
Knives in the field of duty MUST be versatile. You may be cutting a new door through plasterboard or who knows what? Ergo the simple, commando shape.
But I will keep my knives simple and double-edged, or almost double-edged, and have the main, sharp edge out, thank you. I think its a mistake to always hold an edge-in knife. Its a bigger mistake to buy a knife that forces you into a one-or two trick pony move. Like its a mistake to always hold a reverse grip as many people foolishly think. Its also smarter to learn the other 3 counters to common blocks and contacts.
Hock
(This was actually a pretty in-depth discussion here years ago...somewhere.)
