If you're good at it, you can make someone else drop their weapon and face you at a disadvantage. In ITL, Unarmed Combat gives you +1 damage in HTH (the new version does not).
Rick Smith has some very good adjustments to HTH that we've been using in our play testing:
https://tft.brainiac.com/RicksTFT/Fi...HTH_InTFT.html
This includes offensive talents to make it easier to enter HTH and a defensive talent to make it harder for someone to force you into HTH.