Ain't that the truth. So much modern knife defence is wishful thinking. You simply can't ignore the weapon. You'll get killed, plain and simple. In FMA, there's the admonition to "defang the snake". If you don't, you pay the price. The same techniques were used in medieval Europe. I'm sure you'll recognize them zDom. Take a look at these plates from Talhoffer's 1467 manual:
http://www.schielhau.org/taldagger.html
And his Ambraser Codex from 1459:
http://www.schielhau.org/talhoffer1459_ac_dagger.html
And Hundfeld:
http://www.schielhau.org/hundfeld-dagger.html
Here's Fiore dei Liberi from 1410:
http://www.aemma.org/onlineResources/liberi/wildRose/section2.html
Note the principles involved: control the dagger at all costs to ensure safety and then kill the guy ASAP. Note the prevalence of joint locks. The difference between Talhoffer's techniques and those of some modern "experts" is that Talhoffer and his contemporaries are people who actually
fought with knives, not modern armchair martial artists who've never been in a knife fight. I know people who've studied the medieval masters and who have used their techniques on the street in knife encounters and lived to tell the tale without a scratch (which is almost unheard of). The stuff works for real, it's been tested for real for centuries. Compared to those guys, we're a bunch of sewer snoids, and anything we think we know about knives (and fighting in general) doesn't amount to much in comparison.
Best regards,
-Mark