If you mean an actual 50s street gang, don’t bet against them. They had fights without guns. Cowboys may be fit, but they might not fight a lot. If they do, it’s probably just punch outs. No real extended mutli-person fights with dirty tricks. And “chains and knives”, as they used to say in Adam-12.
Given that, if it was a fight between Rooster Cogburn and Fonzie I’m betting on the Duke.
Just under 6’4" vs. 5’6", that’s a tiny bit of an edge.
In movies, my “standard” for a greaser gang are the Pharaohs from American Graffiti. After all, they have the blood initiation ritual.
I’d take a standard gang greaser over a cowboy.
But not all greasers are gang members. I’d take a cowboy over a non-gang greaser because of general actual toughness.
Yeah, totally not meaning anything racially disparaging - off the top of my head, I can only think of white dudes when I consider the generalization of a “greaser” (ie. James Dean, Travolta and his gang in Grease, etc.) There’s even an episode of It’s Always Sunny where Frank gets his '50s gang back together and Mac refers to them as a “greaser gang” (I know the IASIP gang aren’t the best consultation for a moral barometer but you can tell the line wasn’t thrown in to sound racist - Frank’s gang was comprised of 4 or 5 white dudes and an African American).
With that being said, I’d put my money on the cowboy too but I questioned this after reading about the Ducky Boys street gang in NYC.
It is kinda amusing, reading folk who have to look to movies to get an image of a cowboy. In much of Chicago in the 60s-70s, greasers were very obvious. Caucasian, white t-shirt w/ smokes rolled up in sleeve, work pants, and either Chucks or black steel-toed work shoes. Hair slicked back. Generally NOT to be expected in the advanced/honors classes. Overrepresented among dropouts or kids who were held back. Figured they’d largely be employed in trades/factories.
Calling someone a greaser wasn’t an insult - it is just who/what they were, and they would use that term to describe themselves.
Whereas I ONLY knew/know cowboys from what I see on screens… And how accurate is THAT?
To be honest, if you want to talk about the occupation of a cowboy I am one but I don’t wear the git-up. But that is because I grew up in a ranching family.
Part of the reason I provided the silly response above is that both of these stereotypes are silly. One is a romanticization of a non-historical period from fiction (Wild West) and the other is an original anti-immigrant (Hispanic and Catholic) term applied to blue collar workers in the 1960’s.
Now some groups have chosen to copy the fashion of Hollywood characters to self identify with these groups.
I don’t know if fashion means much in a fight, but in this case you pretty much have to play this opinion game in the same way as Batman vs Superman. I don’t know enough movies with the “greaser” motif to make a guess myself.
You were a cowboy, and now you’ve become a cowman.
Oops wrong thread!
On the other hand, one eye vs two, and Rooster’s like twice Fonzie’s age. Or more.
As for the term “cowboy”, at least in Tombstone around the time of the little incident that happened there, the “cowboys” were outlaws, rustlers. What we now call cowboys were called cattlemen. It was an insult to call a cattleman a cowboy.
In that respect, they’d probably be more likely to win the fight.
Mazel tov!
IME, cowboys work for the cattlemen. And cattlemen generally weren’t tough.
One g-grandfather was a cowboy on some of the last cattle drives out of Texas to the railheads further north.
Another g-grandfather owned a ranch and in the summer my father and his brothers worked for him as cowboys. The toughness my uncle developed doing that helped him survive a German POW death march.
We had about 3 rodeos a year in my town at a local jalopy derby racetrack. I was at everyone from before open to close. I saw a lot of fights, much more than any other type of event I had been to besides hockey. I was only about 12 at the time but had seen quite a bit of fighting even at that age. I was impressed with how tough they were and how many punches they were willing to take. I always reflect back on that when I see a drunk cowboy in a bar ( most likely an urban cowboy) But it brings back the memory.
Spectators fighting, competitors fighting, or both?
I’d take the average cowboy over the average greaser. Hell, I’d take the average cowgirl over the average greaser. People that work with large livestock tend to be pretty hard.
Depends. Is the “fight” a showdown at high noon or a game of chicken up at Dead Man’s Curve? Does the cowboy have six years of formal training in contemporary, jazz and tap? Does the greaser’s experience riding on the hood of a circa 1950’s Ford translate to bull riding? How does one judge “rockabilly” vs “acoustic guitar”?
I don’t think that’s “racially disparaging”. The fact is greaser gangs were typically tied to their neighborhood or “territory” and neighborhoods were much more segregated back in the 50s.
I would picture it something like the brief fight in Breakfast Club between the jock Andrew (cowboy) and the punk Bender (greaser):
Greaser talks trash, Cowboy wins the hand to hand fight quickly but does not execute a finishing move, when Cowboy gets up to walk away, Greaser pulls out a switchblade.
I’ve enjoyed all of the answers here but this is the one I can visualize the best.
The jock here was a wrestler, though. The one time in high school I saw a jock start something with a freak (that’s what this clique called themselves) it didn’t end well for the jock. The freaks I knew were fundamentally decent people who happened to like tobacco and weed.
If I remember right it was mostly spectators getting in fights with the cowboys.
Oakland Hells Angels chapter founding president Sonny Barger recounted how the farmhands and cowboys his guys would get into scraps with were as “tough as hell”. And after the fighting was over they’d all hang out together at whatever country bar they were in, enjoying the music and getting smashed together.