These make great "knife simulators".
Practice is vital in such situations. Even in karate schools, wooden or rubber knives and cap guns are common, because you have to learn the actual variables involved in their use. Knives and guns are not magical, and both have very strict rules for their proper and effective use.
Importantly, this matters both for the “defender” *and* the “attacker”, which like in this Nicaraguan case, are just labels. The knife man was the defender until he became the attacker.
Just a single hour of training with a friend teaches volumes, if you are both willing to play it straight. And even the imaginary bullets of a cap gun or the “slashes” and “pokes” of a piece of broomstick register in your brain as ‘hits’.
“If this had been an actual bullet or knife, I would be bleeding right now.”
These make great "knife simulators".