DOVO has launched a powerful 8/8 inch blades called the ARENA series! Where does the name ARENA come from? On April 23, 1910, former US President Theodore Roosevelt gave a speech entitled “Citizenship in a Republic” at the Sorbonne in Paris.

We were inspired by this speech and engraved an excerpt of it on the back of the knife.

This excerpt is often called “The Man in the Arena”. Hence the name ARENA. It reads as follows:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Matching the excerpt from the speech, a lion's head is engraved on the front of the blade, representing the courage of the people in the arena.