I find it is way easier to make a fire that actually stays lit when I use split wood. Partly, this could be due to my lack of experience using exclusively gathered wood, but I figure it's at least partially due to the fact that dry things burn better than damp things (that's also why an evening fire is often easier to get going than a morning one).

Based on this, I find batoning to be a useful skill and something I want my knife to be able to handle - both for those times when I don't want to pack along a hatchet as well as those potential emergency situations where I wouldn't have packed a hatchet to start with.

That said, I don't think you need to get into big knife territory to simply baton. Or at least what I think of big being ... a blade 6 inches or bigger or weighing in at around 1 pound or more (a definition of "big blade" would likely help the conversation).

For example, I've started batoning with my 4" long, 1/8" thick blade and it seems to work fine. A little more thickness and maybe a bit more length would make it better at this particular task, but I don't think you need a huge chopper to process wood in this way, just a strong, solid mid-sized knife.