Sword and Fist

The weak swordsman clings to his instrument. It is better you have a sword, but death must lie under your fingernails, if need be. Learn death with your elbows, death with your knees, and death with your thumbs and fingertips.

— Precept 16 of Meti's Sword Manual, Kill Six Billion Demons

Similar to Sword and Gun, where the character shoots you with a gun in-between slashing at you with a sword, this is about characters who punctuate attacks using a weapon (not necessarily a sword) with unarmed punches and kicks. For the purpose of sorting out more fantastic examples, anything that a Bare-Fisted Monk can do counts as "unarmed attack".

This trope has a firm basis in reality: while fictional warriors tend to perfect the use of a single weapon, Real Life swordsmen and fencers would rarely limit themselves to using the sword when kicks, punches, shoves and grapplings did the job. Getting so distracted with the weapons that you forget about your other options is a grievous mistake. See European Swordsmanship for more info.

With that in mind, there is a variation of this trope that involves throwing punches and kicks in a fight with weapons in situations where using the weapon is a perfectly viable option, and thus there really is no particular reason to punch or kick (for example, a character throwing a spinning kick to the opponent's head when they could simply cut it with the sword). Needless to say, doing this would be very counterproductive in Real Life, as the whole point of using weapons is that they have numerous advantages over fighting hand to hand.

Also despite the name, this trope isn't just exclusive to swordspeople using their fist alongside their bladed weapon. It involves any other melee weapon user that choses to use their fist and feet alongside their close combat weapon.

Subtrope of Choice of Two Weapons. It's often a sign that you're fighting a Combat Pragmatist, willing to use any chance they get in a fight. For characters who switch between armed and unarmed combat (but don't use both in combination), see Multi-Melee Master. Compare also the Gun Counterpart — Gun Fu (sort of). Contrast Never Bring a Knife to a Fist Fight.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Quanxi in Chainsaw Man is an extremely strong and fast swordswoman but she's also no slouch when it comes to hand to hand combat, often resorting to her bare fists and legs once her swords break.
• Several of the eponymous warriors in Claymore, mostly notably Teresa of the Faint Smile, use simple kicks and punches where appropriate in combat instead of only relying on their iconic swords and personal yoki-powered techniques. Thanks to their inherent Super-Strength, their unarmed attacks are often just as deadly as those with their swords.
• Dragon Ball:
  • Dragon Ball:
    • Initially, Goku fought with a Telescoping Staff called the Power Pole in conjunction with his hand-to-hand combat skills.
    • Yamcha is skilled in unarmed combat. Initially, he used a sword.
  • Dragon Ball Z: Future Trunks is trained in martial arts like the other Z-Fighters while also being a Master Swordsman.
• Aoshi Shinamori from Rurouni Kenshin is a master of both swordsmanship and hand to hand combat, and uses both in his duels. In his first appearance he actually used his sword purely for defensive purposes, utilizing it solely to block attacks, while beating the snot out of Kenshin with his fists. After losing that fight Aoshi focuses on becoming a more lethal swordsman, but he returns to this trope in his last fight, when he faces an opponent who can instantly copy his sword techniques but has zero hand to hand ability. Aoshi quickly demonstrates the upside of having turned his entire body into a fighting machine.
  • Seijuurou points out this trope to Kenshin by pretending to do an overhead slash then kicking him, saying that you can't assume a sword is about to be used just because it was raised.
• In Soul Eater:
  • This is Professor Stein's entire fighting style. He generally uses his weapon to block and his fist to attack. He abandons this in favour of just using the weapon when he stops holding his insanity back.
  • Black Star generally fights using one of Tsubaki's several weapon forms, but one of his stronger attacks early on is to punch an enemy while also directly attacking their soul with his. This is seemingly what most of Stein's fist attacks do.
  • Maka resorts to scythe and fist in her second battle against Crona (since cutting Crona would just let them use their blood to attack).
• Vagabond:
  • While Musashi does mostly concentrate on his swordplay, when he fights tougher opponents (or takes on multiple opponents, such as his battles with students from the Yagyu and Yoshioka schools), there is often plenty of punching, kicking, wrestling, eye gouging, sand to the eyes, and more (Musashi is one hell of a Combat Pragmatist). One of his first Worthy Opponents, Inshun, is delighted by how Musashi used this to defeat one of Inshun's fellow Warrior Monks, where Musashi dropped his sword after parrying a thrust, grabbed ahold of the monk's spear, and then punched the monk out.
  • A number of other samurai use this too, perhaps the most notable cases being when Denshichiro attempted to defeat Mushashi by grabbing him in a bear hug with one arm and attempting to stab him with the other, and Ito Ittosai concealing his badly maimed hand and then using it for surprise attacks while he wields his sword one handed.
• Bleach:
  • In the episode 356, during Ichigo's Fullbring training (which consists mostly of sword fighting), his teacher Kugo Ginjo both kicks and punches him.
  • Several of the Arrancar fall under this trope, partly because of their innate ability that hardens their skin, and partly because their Zanpakuto don't usually have any abilities pre-Resurrection.
  • Captain Yamamoto is both a skilled swordsman and a master hand-to-hand combatant. He displayed his skill in martial arts when Wonderweiss sealed the flames of his Zanpakutou making him resort to fighting unarmed.
• Iori Sengoku from Gamaran fights mostly with his sword and sometimes he dual wields, but as his iconic technique Kosen Muto shows he's not shy about punching people up close if he has too. On a similar note other swordsmen in the series are shown using their own fists sometime, up to the Big Bad Kurogane Jinsuke.
• In Sword Art Online, the Martial Arts skill seems to be more of a supplement to weapon-based skills rather than something people specialise in. There are even combos like Meteor Break and Meteor Fall which alternate between unarmed blows and sword slashes, and require both Martial Arts and a weapon-based skill to use.
• In addition to his One-Handed Zweihänder skills and his use of the repeating crossbow, Guts of Berserk will often incorporate his artificial hand as a blunt weapon against Mooks, usually smashing them in the face with it.
• One Piece:
  • Vergo relies primarily on his skill in unarmed combat enhanced by Haki in battle but he also uses a bamboo stick as a Martial Arts Staff.
  • Sabo is skilled in the Ryusoken fighting style which focuses on holding one's fingers in a claw-fashion and then crushing opponents in a powerful grip. Sabo is also trained in stick fighting using metal pipes and can enhance them with either Armament Haki or his Devil Fruit fire powers.
  • Played for Laughs with Luffy in the beginning of the Wano Arc. To complete his disguise as a samurai local, Luffy decided to bring a sword with him. however, as a Bare-Fisted Rubber Man who's barely used a weapon for most of his life, he mainly just resorted to punching and kicking with his stretchy power while holding the sword and randomly swinging it when getting into a fight. He even threw the scabbard at one point.
• Rave Master: the main character Haru initially fought with punches before inheriting Shiba's sword and using it most of the time. Still, his bare-handed fighting skills haven't deteriorated at all, as seen when he punches Dorton, an insect-man with a shell as hard as an armor, with enought power to bend the shell and later defeats Lucia barehanded when the latter has impaled Shuda, hitting hard enough to shatter Lucia's armor and demon sword.

Comic Books

• Most versions of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles involve this; although the Turtles carry weapons, much of their actual combat is done with feet and fists to keep it family friendly. This is especially true of Leonardo ,who carries bladed weapons.
• Wonder Woman
  • Diana while trained in the art of the sword typically fights empty-handed. Given she has strength and speed on par with Superman, her punches and kicks are typically all she needs to get the job done.
  • Wonder Woman (1942): During the Golden Age Diana never picked up a sword outside of tournaments on Paradise Island, but she very often used her favorite weapon the lasso alongside her fists.
  • Other Amazon characters such as Artemis and the Wonder Girls also display skill in armed and unarmed combat.
• Elektra, Daredevil's semi-villainous love interest is trained in unarmed combat and use of the sai. Daredevil himself also counts supplementing his skill with billy clubs with empty-handed fighting taught to him by Stick.
• Jon Sable, Freelance: While teaching Grey the basics of fencing to allow him to choreograph a swordfight/dance scene, Jon explains that a real swordfight would have been nothing like you see in the movies, but involve all sorts of tactics such as grappling your opponent or kicking him in the groin. Any time Jon gets in an actual life and death swordfight in the series, he is shown employing these sort of tactics.
• The Authority: When Midnighter isn't tearing people apart with his bare hands, he uses a metal staff to beat them to death.

Films — Live-Action

• The Jedi and the Sith in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, especially the practitioners of the Ataru technique, combine the traditional lightsaber combat with Force-assisted acrobatic kicks and telekinetic punches.
• James Bond:
  • After Bond is captured in The Man with the Golden Gun, he's taken to a martial arts school to fight its students. Before he has to fight he watches a deadly serious combat between two students of Krabi-krabong fighting with swords. Each of the students kicks the other during the fight. Watch it here.
  • The sword fight in Die Another Day has Bond and Graves exchanging blows as well as slashing a variety of swords at each other.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990): To maintain its PG rating, the two ninja turtles with sharp weapons, Leonardo and Raphael, are never shown actually landing a hit with their weapons. After some flynning, they'll always finish with a kick, punch, or other bloodless strike.

Literature

• Downplayed in The Dark Elf Trilogy, when Drizzt's mentor consistently uses an attack that forces Drizzt (wielding double swords) to employ a certain block from which no advantage can be gained. A high point of his training is when he manages to turn this block into an offensive move by incorporating a kick.
• In X-Wing: Starfighters of Adumar, Wes Janson challenges an Adumari nobleman to a blastsword^note an Adumari sword with an impact-activated blaster inside duel to stop him from killing one of their local allies. Wes blocks the first sword blow, then punches him in the face before disarming him.
  Wes: Forgot to mention, on some worlds, people fight with their feet, too. Feet, hands, rocks, pure cussed willpower — they're warriors. You, you're just a dilettante. [proceeds to dish out a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown]
• In Fate/Apocrypha, Mordred is a Combat Pragmatist among the Knights of the Round Table. As a result, she's more than happy to resort to punches, kicks, and even biting in-between swings of her sword. As a result, she is regarded as Dumb Muscle for her poor swordsmanship relative to the other knights, but it's a moot point when she's almost as strong as her "father", King Arthur.

Live-Action TV

• Game of Thrones: Sandor "The Hound" Clegane is given such a style, with both large swings of his greatsword and absolutely brutal hand-to-hand fighting combined to make him one of the more dangerous opponents in Westeros. His brawl with Polliver's men is a perfect example, in that he spends equal parts of the fight cutting them apart and just smashing their heads in with plate-armored fists.
• Kamen Rider is a franchise where virtually every character fights this way. The vast majority of Heisei and Reiwa-era Riders have some form of weapon that they use together with martial arts, most commonly a sword. Even Riders that focus near-exclusively on their sword will drop it to perform their Rider Kick.
• Star Trek: Picard: In "Absolute Candor", Elnor is victorious against three ruffians by mixing unarmed combat with his swordsmanship. He causes the first man to fall over by roughly pushing the latter down with his hand and then launching himself into the air from the guy's back. As Elnor performs a side flip, he hits the second hooligan with a flying kick to the face, and then he chops off Tenqem's head with his tan qalanq.

Tabletop Games

• Many soldiers, fighters and more in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, not only use a weapon (ranged◊ or close-combat◊) on one hand but sometimes also have a Power Fist attached over the other.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • In Edition 3.5, the Snap Kick feat lets the user make an additional kick along with their normal attacks, at the cost of slightly lower accuracy. While other feats exist with similar effects (and while allowing you to make the attack with your stronger main weapon), Snap Kick is one of the few that can be added on any time you make a melee attack, including attacks of opportunity, Special Attacks like martial adept strikes, or even touching an opponent to cast a spell on them.
  • It is entirely possible to roll a Fighter in 4E that operates on this trope, with specific powers that have secondary effects if using a bladed weapon in one hand while having a free off hand. Descriptions range from a quick sucker punch following a successful sword strike, to cuffing someone by the collar for more efficient stabbing and slashing. There are even supporting Feats that will help accentuate this specific type of character build.
  • In 5th Edition, one of the many benefits of the Monk's Martial Arts feat is that you are able to make an Unarmed Strike as a Bonus Action each time you use an Attack Action with a Monk weapon or an Unarmed Strike. Monk weapons are defined as "shortswords and any simple weapon that does not have the Heavy or Two-Handed property." Therefore, it is possible for you to slash with a shorstword and follow it up with a punch/kick/what have you every turn.

Video Games

• In many weapon-based fighting games, characters can use kick attacks, and sometimes punches as well, in addition to slashing with their weapon. Examples include but are not limited to:
  • Battle Arena Toshinden series.
  • Samurai Shodown series.
  • Guilty Gear series.
  • Soul Series. This one is of the unrealistic variety.
• Similar to the movies, many Star Wars Expanded Universe games—set both the Old Republic (e.g. SWTOR) and the New Republic eras (e.g. Jedi Academy)—see the Force users combine lightsaber and unarmed combat (particularly the kicks).
• Devil May Cry:
  • The first example of this in the series was Lucia, the Deuteragonist of Devil May Cry 2. Her fighting style utilized twin curved swords, acrobatic maneuvers and spinning kicks.
  • Nero of Devil May Cry 4 uses his Red Queen sword and Devil Bringer arm for a brutal melee combat style.
  • Trish in both of her playable appearances has a fighting style that revolves around the combination of Sparda and her bare hands for combos. A cutscene in the fourth game also shows her as Gloria taking down a group of demons with a fighting style that mixes knife fighting with fluid, acrobatic movements.
• Elsword: Raven's playstyle involves using a one-handed sword and his robotic left arm. Depending on his class choices, he'll opt to use his sword or his left arm more.
• The eponymous protagonist of Prince of Persia (2008) wields a longsword and a clawed gauntlet in battle and his combos usually consist of alternating sword strikes, grabs, and throws.
• League of Legends: Braum's main method of attack is a good old fashioned fist to the face but he also makes use of the gigantic magical door-turned shield he carries around with him as a "smashing board".
• Monks in World of Warcraft use their bare hands for most of their abilities, but use their weapons for some.
• Yoshimitsu and Kunimitsu in Tekken, as the only two who use weapons in the otherwise bare-fist fighter game, mix martial arts with swordplay. In earlier games, sword attacks designed as kind of last-ditch super moves of a sort, and were (very) few in number, but the absurdity of watching a man armed with a katana punch his opponents with his armed hand led to the grand expansion of sword-based moves in later installments. Tekken 7 introduced another ninja named Master Raven who used her sword in some of her attacks.
• Since every fighter in Super Smash Bros. has a grab, pummel, and throw move, any given playable swordfighter in the game that uses nothing but his/her sword (i.e. Marth, Roy, Lucina, Ike, Meta Knight, Cloud, and Shulk) could be considered to utilize this. In particular, while Ike is simply a swordsman in his home series, and mostly uses Ragnell in his attacks, his neutral A combos has him punch and kick before swinging his sword down. He also punches and kicks his opponents in his Final Smash, Great Aether, in between slashing at them. Shulk also uses punches and kicks to set up some of his Monado strikes.
• In Dissidia Final Fantasy, Jecht primarily uses kicks and punches in his combos, pulling out his sword for heavier attacks. While Tidus and Squall also have a few of flying kicks and tackles to compliment their swordplay, Multi Melee Masters Vaan and Firion use unarmed combat alongside their swords and other weapons entirely. In NT, Ramza has some body-tackles to serve as his dash attacks, and one of his HP attacks is the Monk's Earthrender (an uppercut that rips up geysers of lava).
• When Zack Fair is Promoted to Playable in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, he makes himself stand out from Cloud by having a pretty different moveset. Incorporating hand-to-hand combat alongside his sword techniques in his combos. A possible Continuity Nod to his mentor Angeal who fought with his fists to avoid wearing out his Buster Sword.
• Sword of Paladin: The Bluegale style makes use of both swordplay and pugilist techniques. This is because Jin trained under Emilia, a Bare-Fisted Monk, in order to supplement his mediocre swordsmanship.
• Tales Series:
  • Tales of the Abyss:
    • The Albert sword style incorporates artes such as Demon Fist, Raging Blast, and Havoc Strike, which use the fist, palm, and feet respectively. This style also has Rending Thrust, which is a thrust followed by an uppercut.
    • Guy, a Sigmund style practitioner, includes a kick in his Tiger Blade.
  • In Tales of Vesperia, Yuri Lowell's artes involve a combination of acrobatic martial arts and swordplay, some being derived from the arte lists of previous Tales protagonists.
• Travis Touchdown from No More Heroes uses a combination of sword strikes, unarmed strikes, and wrestling moves. In the first game, Travis's non-sword attacks were used to stun or break a guard of an enemy or boss, so you could pull off a grapple that either does large damage or instant kills a mook. The damage output for his punch attacks were minimal, but you could charge it to stun targets faster. The sequel revamped his punch and kick attacks to do decent damage, along with mixing up sword attacks with non-sword attacks, and on top of stunning mooks and bosses. While the third game dispenses with the punches and kicks as part of Travis's fighting style, he retains his wrestling moves, with one possible Super Mode allowing him to perform multiple grapples one after the other.
• Much like its spiritual predecessor, Mondo Zappa, from Killer is Dead has a similar fighting style too. Albeit, his left arm, Musselback, is used to break guards or stun. You could upgrade for a full charge attack that could stun a wire instantly.
• Monster Hunter: Rise invokes this with one of its Sword & Shield weapons, the Ninja Sword: the "shield", in this case, is simply a prayer bead bracelet. As a result, the weapon's Shield Bash attacks look more like punches.
• In Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, you have Guard Break moves that can be used to punish opponents that are blocking too much. For the former, it's a 'power push' that enables you to practically push the enemy around. For the latter, it's a kick. You can also equip fist weapons as your offhand weapon, both for parrying and punching your foes.
• In Bloodborne, if you leave your left hand slot empty, you can stagger your foes from behind with an offhand charge attack, which comes in handy if your Trick Weapon's charge attack is too slow to execute or if it simply doesn't have one in the transformed mode, such as the whip mode of Beast Cutter and Threaded Cane.
• This is highly common inFor Honor. The Centurion's moveset consists of mixing slashes and stabs via his gladius with punching the daylights out of the opponent with a pair of metal gauntlets. The Warden stuns enemies by shoulder-bashing to open them up for cuts with the longsword. The Warlord can open enemies up for a quick stab with his Viking sword after headbutting them. The Highlander's strongest Combos are intiated by landing a powerful forward-kick onto an enemy or alternatively grabbing them by the shoulder before throwing them to the ground. The Tiandi can send an enemy flying backwards with a powerful kick. The Jiang Jun can Neck Lift an enemy (with is accompanied by a disapproving shake of the head). The dane-axe-wielding Raider can outright pick up an enemy, carry them off, and toss them to the ground to follow up with a quick cut with their axe, or proceed to knee the enemy in the face after tossing them into a wall.
• Mortal Kombat features numerous characters who integrate weaponry into their fighting style such as Kitana with her war fans or Jade with her staff. Some entries even give the characters the option to switch between an armed and unarmed fighting style.
• Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice: The Lone Shadow shinobi may be master swordsmen, but their most dangerous attacks are arguably their extensive set of devastating kicks (with certain individuals also capable of using poison hand strikes). Lady Butterfly also favors kicks when not attempting to skewer you with her kunai. The sword-wielding protagonist himself can get in on this trope by learning various martial arts moves from the Senpou Esoteric Text.
• Jago and Orchid from Killer Instinct. Jago is a Warrior Monk with a Shotoclone moveset that also makes use of a sword while Orchid is a Kick Chick who uses dual batons or tonfas as weapons.
• Mai Shiranui of Fatal Fury and The King of Fighters uses a Combat Hand Fan in her quick and mobile fighting style.
• For most of the Dead or Alive series, the Ninja characters' weapons were purely for aesthetic purposes. However, Dead or Alive 6 has them using their swords and kunai in their moves for the first time in the games.
• Ninja Gaiden: Ryu Hayabusa can use a few unarmed moves like a Spinning Piledriver in addition to slicing up enemies.
• During the final battle of King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow, Alexander and Alhazred end up in a sword duel, with Alexander on the ropes as all he has is a giant, unwieldy ceremonial sword taken from the wall that's too heavy for him to carry, let alone attack with. As a result, their ensuing battle is a mix of sword parries and sucker-punches.
• In Jump Force, the ability for the player to customize their protagonist character's moveset allows them to use sword attacks from the likes of Kenshin, Zorro, and Ichigo in conjunction with bare-fisted fighting styles. The later addition of a dedicated sword-based fighting style also lets this work in reverse, with bare-handed special attacks supplementing swordplay.
• Should you give in to anger and turn to The Dark Side in Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, the final boss will not be Marka Ragnos, but Kyle Katarn. Kyle will initially open the fight with lightsaber combat and Force powers, but cross him long enough and he will start beating the ever-loving shit out of you with his bare hands, and he does not care about fair play. He will put you in a blood choke and throw you through statues, pick you up by the leg and overhead slam you into the ground, or simply grab you by the throat and start piling on gut punches. And yes, he is noticeably harder to defeat than Marka Ragnos, and that's with even with a full array of otherwise frighteningly lethal Dark-side Force powers to call on.
• A very common occurrence in the Yakuza series, thanks to being a Beat 'em Up series with loads of characters that can throw a good punch or kick.
  • A lot of the weapon-based HEAT action in the series involve either kicks, punches and the like. Somewhat understandable as some of the Improvised Weapons you can grab can be on the Improbable side.
  • Goro "Mad Dog of Shimano" Majima, is very well-known in the series not only his legendary fighting skills but also his tanto dagger. Creating a fast and unpredictable fighting style involving lots of slashes, stabs, kicks and punches.
    • Once he becomes Promoted to Playable as a Deuteragonist in Yakuza 0, he also unlocks the "Slugger" style, which has him use a beat-up old pummeling bat for both offensive and defensive purposes. Alongside his heavy damage-dealing swings he also incorporates a few strong kicks into the style. After finishing the Cabaret Club storyline he can acquire his "Legend" style, allowing him to use his "Mad Dog of Shimano" style alongside his feared Tanto (referred to as the Demonfire Dagger).
  • With the boss fight against the returning Hiroshi Hayashi of Yakuza 2, he rips off and dual wields a pair of pipes off a wall to fight Kiryu and if that wasn't enough incorporates a few kicks as well in Kiwami 2, mostly sweeping kicks though.
  • The focal antagonist of Yakuza 2 Ryuji Goda, makes use of a katana in his second boss fight but also has a kick attack, although it gets dropped in Kiwami 2 to focus solely on his sword, but they do keep kick from a Quick Time Event only.
  • Kamon Kanai and Kan Ogita from Yakuza 5, make use of knives in their respective boss fights, with the former using his brute strength to deliver open-handed strikes with his left hand while the latter has a butterfly knife but only uses it sparingly as his Dance Battler moveset is given more focus.
  • Ryū ga Gotoku Ishin! has Kogoro Katsura / Matsusuke Niibori, due to being portrayed by Akiyama. He makes use of kicks alongside his katana skills.
• Divinity: Original Sin II: Wielding a one-handed weapon with a free offhand enables the skill "Sucker-Punch", dealing modest damage and a useful Knockdown effect for a single Action Point. The AP efficiency also makes it easy to switch to and from this arrangement while Dual Wielding or using a shield.
• Fire Emblem:
  • With the introduction of gauntlet-type weapons in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, any character can use both swords and gauntlets with enough practice. The characters most proficient in both weapon types are Byleth, Felix, Catherine, and Rhea.
  • In Fire Emblem Engage, fist-type weapons are referred to as "body arts", and Alear is the only character capable of using both sword and body arts at once after being promoted to their advanced class, Divine Dragon.
• Disgaea:
  • Disgaea 5: Killia's Weapon Mastery status shows him to be equal capable of wielding Swords and Fists, though the story heavily leans towards him being a martial artist.
  • Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny: Zed, much like Killia above, is equally able to wield Swords and Fists, though the story leans towards him punching his foes.
• Despite carrying a BFS, Final Fantasy X's Jecht fights primarily with punches and kicks in Dissidia Final Fantasy and other spin-off appearances. If he's using his sword for something besides blocking, its usually his biggest and strongest attacks.

Web Animation

• RWBY:
  • Ren uses two submachine guns with sickle-like blades attached to them as weapons and is also a master martial artist. In a fight against a Grimm, he demonstrated how powerful Aura can be by breaking off it's fang and jamming it into it's eye before finishing it with an Aura-charged palm strike.
  • In his fight with Cinder, Ozpin blocked her fire blasts before charging at her with a combo of rapid strikes from his cane and then a punch.
  • During his fight with Tyrian, Qrow momentarily loses his sword but is still able to use a few punches to knock Tyrian back.

Western Animation

• The titular He-Man of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983) makes use of his Super-Strength and his Transformation Trinket that is also his Cool Sword: the Sword of Power as his main weaponry of choice in battle, mostly due to being aimed at a younger audience. More often than not he chooses to make use of his Super-Strength offensively while the sword is used for more defensive purposes (although not to say there aren't situations where he hasn't actually used the sword for it's intended purpose).
  • This continues on in Masters of the Universe: Revelation, where his Super-Strength is shown in better detail. Alongside that he gets to properly use both his fists and sword of power in battle.
• While the titular Samurai Jack fights with his sword or any weapons at hand, he also incorporates the martial arts he was taught in battle. Delivering strong kicks or strikes if needed.

Real Life

• Weapon forms for Northern Shaolin Kung Fu incorporate hand to hand along with the weapon (particularly Longsword forms).
• The Filipino martial art of Eskrima is a fighting style that teaches stick, knife and sword fighting along with hand to hand techniques. Notably, it usually teaches weapon techniques first then extends the same motions to bare-handed strikes, down to its single-weapon techniques often being dual-wielded with a "live hand".
• While sport Kendo only includes strikes with the sword; historical Japanese martial arts includes a full range of pragmatic techniques for striking or throwing an opponent, often following blocking or deflecting their blade. See Kenjutsu.
• The Thai martial art of Krabi Krabong, along with weapons training it also makes use of kicks and other unarmed techniques from Muay Thai and other traditional Thai martial arts, while armed.
• The Vietnamese martial art Vovinam teaches unarmed combat and training in weapons such as claws, knives, chisels, swords and fans.
• The Canadian martial art Okichitaw which was developed by George J. Lépine of the Plains Cree First Nations. It teaches hand-to-hand techniques in conjunction with weaponry. Its two main weapons are Gunstock Warclub and the Long Knife.
• The British martial art Bartitsu. Created in 1898 by Edward William Barton-Wright, it is a fighting system created from, boxing, kickboxing, jujitsu and canne de combat.
• Hapkido also teaches use of weapons like a knife, rope, cane and nunchaku.
• Most styles of Silat feature weapons training and unarmed combat training.
• Diamanga, a martial art from Madagascar that incorporates stick fighting with kicking techniques similar to Taekwondo and Capoeira, uniquely hands are only used defensively to deflect and prevent hits (and grappling for self defense situations).
• The Dog Brothers Martial Arts Association's "Real Contact Stick Fighting" bouts incorporate techniques from multiple martial art systems (especially some of the above) to include punching, kicking, elbows, knees, and grappling while fighting with weapons.

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