There are alot of "fighters" and "fighting knives" on the market. But, since formal duels are rare these days it's hard to understand what we really want from a fighting knife.
My working definition has been that a pure fighter is what you have left after you have stripped the maximum amount of utility out of the design. I usually imagine something along the lines of a common steak knife. It is light, strong, flexible,designed to cut flesh, easy to conceal, hard to trace, and cheap. Definitely not my first choice as a field knife, but we are not talking about utility.
We are also probably not talking about a sword fight, or anything that resembles a sword fight. Swords require a minimal amount of distance between the two opponents. You need room to manuver the point, or accelerate the cutting edge.
I hope never to be in a real knife fight, but I can imagine that it would involve much closer distances and a great deal of grappling. Which knife depends on how you intend to fight. 14" knives are fine if you think you can force an opponent to give you the 2 feet of separation you need to use it. But, the same knife would be nearly useless if the opponent manages to wrestle you to the ground. Which is precisely what I expect the opponent to do if he had a smaller knife.
n2s
