Two fights in my life: one in grade school and one in junior high. Won both of them. Now, I’ve done some assholish things in bars over the years after drinking a sixpack of Ol’ Blabbermouth, and probably should have ended up in a brawl on many occasions, but I always had the sense to walk away before the red rage set in. I did have one odd incident when I was out drinking with my buddy and his girlfriend. Somehow she took offense at something I said in the bar, and as we’re walking to the car, I turned to say something to my friend and she wings a kick at me. I was able to block it with my hand, but the kick landed on my little finger, which hurt like a motherfucker. I completely lost it and went after her with the intention of giving her skinny ass a serious beat-down. Luckily, my friend grabbed me and got me calmed down, while she cowered behind the car. Man, booze is bad news.
You talkin to me?:mad:
Yes, I’ve been in a few fights. Won some, lost some.
No. Ive been assaulted a couple of times, but was able I get away from them.
I teach Taekwondo and I will chime in with a strong second to this book. His writing style is a little loose but the information is pure gold.
As far as fights, my last serious one was subduing someone who really didn’t want to go to jail back when I was a deputy sheriff, 35+ years ago.
No.
Not since 9th grade.
It’s been awhile. I try to avoid them if possible. Dental work is expensive and people can die from fights, I think I’d feel pretty bad if I accidently killed a guy from a fight even if he deserved it. I hear these stories too often of people getting in an argument over something trivial machismo shit, guy gets punched out, knocks his head. Ends up in the hospital and dies a couple of days later.
The last one was one my friend and our girlfriends at the time were driving back from a night out when his vehicle gas gauge was broken and we ran out of gas and was walking back to a gas station. A mini van drove buy insulted my friends girlfriend, he flipped them the bird, the van screeched to a halt, van doors opened and 9 guys jumped out. I counted them as they ran towards us.
We immediately tried to de-escalate the situation. But they were having none of that, they wanted someone to pummel that night. They jumped us, I had my car keys in between my fist from the minute the van stopped and I was just trying to avoid the blows and kicks for the most part as I figured I didn’t want to piss them off any more than they were. Until I saw one of them out of the corner of my eye punch my girlfriend as she tried to stop them. Then I lost it, the fists started flying then.
It happened at a nearby late night diner and people had come out to watch. Eventually one of them screamed they’ve called the cops that was enough for them and got into the van and took off.
I fight as often as I can, but never out of anger and always with consenting adults. We also have rules.
As far as “angry bar fights” go, I will do everything to avoid them. People can get killed in those things.
Besides, violence doesn’t solve problems. It’s just a lot of fun in a controlled environment. 
Not me; I’m just a boring guy from suburbia. I guess I almost got in a fight in college. Some guy was in a bad mood from a bad hangover one night in the lounge of our dorm and made some comment about how he would “shut [me] up.” I told him to go ahead since I was sitting next to my roomate who had a black belt in . . . something, and there were at least a dozen people in the room. I never had liked this guy and figured the one hit he might get at me would be worth seeing him kicked out of school.
Once a year or three. I hang a few rough places and maybe – just maybe – I’m a little quick to react. The fights I’ve seen where people go through all the stages of fighting have usually turned out the worse; where both parties are badly hurt. So as soon as it starts to “look like a fight and sound like a fight” I assume its going to be a fight and bypass all the foreplay and start smacking shit out of the appropriate location/person. The dude doing the talking and starting it all has a point to make; I don’t. My only point is to win and/or walk away and that isn’t helped by talking.
Never got in a single fight. All through public school there might be one fight a semester which always drew a lot of attention since they were so rare.
As for the Monkey Dance, I thought that was the triumphant prancing that you sometimes see thugs do after bashing someone’s head in, after which they circle back in and pummel the victim some more. You can see a good example of it here, which shows two youths beating a 29-year-old man to a state of unconsciousness. In the end it’s really only one attacker who’s stomping the victim. At about 22 seconds you see him hopping, almost skipping away from the victim probably planning another charge and blow, and during these two or three seconds it looks almost like he’s doing a dance while he looks for approval from the crowd. You could see the same thing in the men who pulled Reginald Denny out of his truck in 1992 and beat most of the structure out of his face. I’ve always wondered this sort of display is seen in other primates.
More than a few, scattered throughout my misspent youth. Won more than I lost but learned early I didn’t have a taste for starting them, just that there’s a point beyond which I will not be pushed. Dabbled in various martial arts over the years. Avoided fights through my mid twenties to just past thirty then started working as a bouncer. I’ve been in a lot more since then.
Nothing since Jr high. The last one, eight grade, so I was about 13. I was in gym class, which was never great for me, and I had just had a really bad time - not sure what happened exactly, maybe getting picked on or something. I don’t recall, just recall that I was enraged and on the verge of crying and couldn’t process beyond the absolute simplest things. I was walking to my assigned bench space and the guy next to me stepped into my way. I’m sure he did it unintentionally, but it was just the wrong thing at the wrong time. And he didn’t move. And I was just too fried to go around him. So I tried to politely ask him to move. Only I was way beyond calm, riding the outer edge of control and on the verge of tears, so I’m sure it didn’t come out as a polite request, more of an angry demand. From his perspective it must have seemed that I marched up to him and then started demanding he get out of my way.
Anyway, he bows up instead of moving out of the way, and the next thing I know we’re in a shove to wrestling match on the ground, at which point the coach shows up and takes us into his office.
It really wasn’t his fault at all, it was totally a miscommunciation due to my state of mind. We got along fine after that. We were never buddies, but never had any issues, either. It just was one of those things.
In adulthood, I have seen a few instances of fights that could have broken out, but didn’t push the confrontation. No Monkey Dance for me. I also did see a fight break out in front of a dance club/bar one night. Me and some friends were approaching the front, saw some guys come out of a side door and one guy cold cocks the other. It didn’t do anything, but the guy mouths back about he’s getting attacked, blah blah blah, they aren’t going to do anything, next thing I know a handful of guys are going at it in front of the club right in the vicinity of me and my friends. I’m standing there not knowing what to do, kinda wanting to help the guy who got sneak attacked out of my sense of fair play, but realize that I don’t know any of these clowns, don’t know who is with who, don’t know who said or did what to whom inside the club before my arrival. All I know is some drunken dudes want to pound each other. I paused for about a half a second, then decided I didn’t need to be a part of that mess, and stepped back and basically tried to ensure me and my friends were clear of the melee. The bouncers came out and broke things up. I did see one guy getting a pretty good pounding in the face, but it sort of stopped and we then went inside.
Sadly, yes. I won most of them and got my arse kicked too I have seen real fighters though and there is no monkey dance. Growing up on Dublin’s Northside I saw some dreadful fights. The real harden attack instantly and usually from behind There is no discussion or warning or even posturing. They just go in and end it. It’s very scary to see full on.
wow. This was a good one.
Neither one of my sons fight very often, but my younger son fights to defend himself. My older son fights to put you in the ground.
Never as an adult. I was always a big kid, but in high school I learned how to look confident when I move, the kind of confidence that lets everyone know that ‘I* am not ot be ***ed with’.
In middle shool, though, no such skills. I was still big, so none of the other kids want to actually fight me. But that didn’t stop them from bothering and tormenting me to no end. Since my self-worth was so abominably low, all I really did was respond to them, which was exactly what they wanted.
One day, though, I got one of them. Clotheslined him as he was running past me(it was one of the things those kids tried to do. Since I was slow, I could never catch them, so they always tried to see how close they could get before running away.) Almost broke his jaw, and he never tried anything again. The running tactic was soon abandoned, but the other kids still found a hundred new ways to make my life hell until I grew a spine.
Funny thing was, though, I would join the football team in high school, and the kid in question was the star quarterback of my class. I ended up blocking for him for two years(before I was switched to defensive specialist), and we actually became good teamates. He later apologized(through his mother to my mother, in passing. It wasn’t a big concern for me by that point, but apparently he was all guilty about it).