The chances of "winning" the physical fight could be insanely high, but it'd still make more sense to first try cooperation, to see if you could avoid the knife fight entirely.
So my bias disagree's here :)
I suspect we are both right.
I refresh every couple of months.
I find it somewhat hilarious that you had a clear demonstration that accidents can happen in fights, yet you still advocate escalating to violence before verifying if the violence can be avoided altogether.
Dont forget this original conversation was about a trained military guy and whether he should have fought or not.
Im just trying to communicate something interesting.
Dan Inosanto used to run (and maybe still does) knife defense courses for, among others, police officers.
The rule of thumb is that in knife-vs-gun situations, if your gun is holstered, the magic number to not die is 15 FEET. If a knife-wielding attacker is within 15 feet of you, trying to race him by drawing your gun to shoot him is more likely to end with you getting stabbed.
> A knife would certainly hurt more but adrenaline can keep you moving.
...And then you bleed to death.
> I guess my training revolved around the idea that the you should never surrender an advantage if you have it.
Being ALIVE is the real advantage. "Winning" a fight doesn't mean anything when you're going into shock on the way to the hospital.
Even if you beat someone up and escape without a scratch, the guy's buddies might kill you in your hotel room two years later.
However, the kinds of techniques described here can keep you alive in tough countries. Everyone seemed to be expressing the opinion that the guy described in the OP was idiotic or dangerous - Im trying to simply put across information I know that counterpoints that view.