That age-old truism: The older I get, the better I was. 
Or in this case: the victors get to write the history books. Good on ya’ and the owner too.
Been in a few, back in the day. I was in a band and we played an assortment of places ranging from college bars all the way down to biker bars where they had chicken wire in front of the stage and thrown bottles were common. I never worried about playing the biker bars, it was the freaking college frat spawn that were the worst. Although memorably I was having a few shots after sound check a couple hours before we were going to play, a fairly drunken businessasshole decided he was going to pick me up no matter what. I had a process, say no twice, third time no with throwing a drink in the assholes face, 4th time tended to be one of my steel toe sneakers to the kneecap which tended to get the point across. One fine afternoon the assholes buddy took umbrage at my kneecapping the asshat so he swung on me, so he got a steel toe to the nuts and a fist to the temple. Last I heard from the cops both got transported to Strong Memorial Hospital and we went onstage that evening like normal. [don’t screw with the woman who horsed 200 pound billets of metal for a day job, it doesn’t go well.]
I do have a thin scar on my chest from a knife tip, from a female who thought the asshole hitting on me would never hit on a woman, I must have been hitting on him. She ended up with a broken nose and a visit from the cops, the bouncers in the club were ‘brothers from another mother’ to me, we played there most weeks on Thursdays, that was also the bar that the one blind date my parents set up for me with the kid of a work associate didn’t go well for him, it was also the last time I ever went on a date that I didn’t drive myself - pulling the put out or get out routine doesn’t sit well with me, a woman is never obliged to provide sex no matter how much money [or lack of it] gets spent by the guy.
Not sure I entirely agree. The dude probably had something coming, but punching a guy’s face repeatedly while others are holding him still (then doing likewise with his gut) doesn’t exactly make you Captain America.
Not suggesting kayaker did anything wrong.
I grew up in a neighborhood where violence was common and often very sudden. There were lots of bars, and lots of fights. I was only involved in one. There were a group of guys shooting pool. As we were leaving my brother in law accidentally bumped the guy that was shooting. A few seconds later, it was the pool shooters against us in a fight that was almost a bar fight cliché. It spilled out into the parking lot. The police rolled up a few minutes later and broke it up. No one pressed charges.
Is it common for people to get seriously hurt in bar fights? On the one hand, it seems that a lot of them resemble chimps fighting over territory but they don’t seem to be started over anything serious enough to warrant injuring someone. Especially in the US, it seems way too risky that someone would pull out a gun.
Agree completely that’s not individual heroism. But it may well be collective heroism. It’s definitely a successful example of collective defense against an individually superior threat.
Guy comes into a bar knowingly dragging an underage woman. That’s a crime. Guy then pushes the bouncer aside. That’s 1 count of assault. It also shows the guy’s aggressive frame of mind. Then shoves the owner to the ground. That’s a second count of assault. It really shows the guy’s frame of mind. All within the first minute-ish in what we’re told is a nice joint, not a fight bar.
Like the old saying: “When someone shows/tells you who they are, believe them the first time.”
What now? It’s easy to say “call the cops”. And is the Right Thing(r) to do. But …
Based on what I know of @kayaker’s age, this may well have been pre-cellphone. Or at least in the era when only a few people carried them. So now the bartender (if he’s not also the bouncer or owner) is dialing 911 on the corded phone behind the bar while Mr. Personality is standing there.
Even if the 911 call is finished uninterrupted, what’s Mr. Personality going to do next? Demand to be served. And what happens when the barkeep says “No.”?
My bottom line: This is going to get out of hand before the cops show up. It’s now just a matter of how it gets out of hand.
Rule 1: there are no rules in a bar / street fight. Overwhelming force by the “good guys” (more rational side) is the way to minimize the serious injuries to both sides. We don’t know how big or bad this dude is or how small or meek the crew of older guys is. Good bet a guy who shoves bouncers on the way into a bar has seen his share of fights and has some idea of how to handle himself.
That’s the immediate tactical situation. The owner also has a strategic concern.
Knowing how/where @kayaker lives, this is a small-town mostly rural area. Mr. Personality lives local and can come back any day at any time. How to persuade this yahoo he’s really, permanently unwelcome? Having the cops escort him out is pretty weak sauce.
Yes, by going full bore on the guy the owner is increasing the risk the guy returns 2 weeks later with 3 pals & some guns. Or not; hard to say in real time which is the better course. I will say you don’t get to be a small-town bar owner in his 60s by messing up that calculus more than once.
There no good answer to a violent confrontation. There are just gradations of bad answers.
My meaning was not (only) call the cops.
If the story had finished with a group of guys piling on top of the guy, it’s all good. A couple kicks or punches flying? I would have likely done the same.
But punching a guy repeatedly in the face while he can’t defend himself is cowardly and dangerous.
In the movies such a person ends up with a black eye and a couple of cuts. In real life you can end up with brain damage or facial disfigurement from such a beating.
It doesn’t seem proportionate to me, this might be one of those times where US culture differs a lot from mine.
Looking back on that night, I was surprised by how quickly time went by. I was holding/securing an arm, hanging tight with both hands to the guy’s wrist, while he continued to struggle. All punches/kicks happened while we struggled to get him to and then out the door. I only learned who did what after the fact.
I never saw the guy again, but heard descriptions of his bruised & battered face, both eyes swollen shut, etc.
Less than a year later, the bar burned down. I know that the guy was not to blame for the fire, in fact I know who was to blame.
Small towns are weird. Around the same time this all happened, a weird local dude (who I sometimes drank with) was jumped and beaten very badly. I later learned that the beating was done by a group of girls on the local high school’s volleyball team in retribution for the guy cheating on a team member with her mother.
Can you make a thread just about your hometown? 
I don’t really consider this my hometown. We live in a rural area because we like the outdoors, have horses and dogs, and want a home without neighbors nearby. It turns out most of the people we live around are not the kind of people we’d like to live around, though.
I’d worry about legalities. I’d have to look into the statute of limitations for some things, and I probably have said too much in relating the few stories I have shared.
But it is funny. I texted one of the guys I still talk with who was present for the bar fight. He told me a few things I did not know about that night. Oh, man!!
Many years ago, in a place far away from where I am now, literally and figuratively, my then-spouse and I owned a pizza parlor that had an adjoining area with pool tables and arcade games. Think Pac-Man. We only served beer and wine but that was enough for some of the dairy farm crews, who got off work at 3 p.m. and started drinking at our place at 3:15. There were many a raised-voice argument but only one time that I saw a fight start to break out. One very drunk guy took umbrage at something, whacked the pool cue he was holding on the pool table, broke it off and started threatening people. I was so angry at the destruction of the pool cue, without thinking, I went around the bar and shouted at him. Something like, “How dare you destroy my property! Your mother would be ashamed of you!” Thing is, I have a really good “outside” voice. It projects a long way. The whole place went silent when I spoke. I think they were taken completely unaware at what sounded very much like a “Mom” voice. The guy with the broken cue looked at me, looked at the cue, dropped it and apologized.
When I was married, we used to go to the Blackfeet Reservation to visit my wife’s family. She (and her family) made it clear I should stay out of the bars. This article matches what I remember being told
The Warbonnet is in Browning, which is sort of the biggest town on the rez. It’s a good place to get really, really drunk, and you are guaranteed to see a fight if you’re there during the weekend.
and
Then there’s Ick’s Bar, also in downtown Browning. Everyone that you meet will tell you to cross Ick’s off your list. Don’t go, they’ll say; it’s too rough there, it’s depressing…
As far as we could tell, Ick’s is a great, solid beer-and-a-shot bar. Just like at the Warbonnet, you have to knock to get in. They come around the corner and look at you through a few inches of bulletproof glass and if you pass muster, you’re in
and
Last, but far from least, we have Kip’s Bar in the town of St. Mary. Just last summer, a white kid was stabbed by a Blackfeet here. Kip’s has a reputation for being rough, so if you’re white, don’t show up there without a local friend.
I’ve known a couple of guys like that. One was in college. The nicest guy you could imagine when sober - a star physics student. But unpredictably, when at a bar or party, he would just coldcock someone. I never saw anyone put someone down with a single punch like that guy.
When I trained martial arts, I can think of 2 guys who would look for opportunities to try out what they think they learned.
Other than these 3 guys, I’m not sure I ever experienced anything other than pushing/shoving macho posturing. And yeah, I spent thousands of hours in hundreds of bars, favoring dives. Passed uneventful time in biker bars, bars where I was the only person of my ethnicity, etc.
I was just thinking that. Probably because it was on HBO or something this afternoon.
I’ve been to a lot of bars over the years but haven’t seen a whole lot of fights. And most of the ones I have witnessed or experienced have mostly just been drunk meatheads posturing about trying to act tough. I’d say maybe a dozen times over thousands of hours over many decades of hanging out at bars or similar drunken venues I actually got into some sort of issue with someone. Usually it would involve some drunk ass getting aggressive with one of the girls in our group.
My first husband was a biker, I saw tons of fights. One night I was sitting next to couple who were arguing quietly at the bar. The guys were outside smoking or whatever. The fella next to me very quietly stuck his buck knife in his lady’s leg. Surreal. I sat for a moment while I watch the blood seep up on her jeans then quietly got up and went out to report it to the guys.
Another time a girl friend and I were in the can, when we heard “POP POP POP.” Another biker group had showed up on my guy’s gang turf. Shooting. I ran for my truck and the guys threw all their weapons in the the back and covered them. Now I’m driving around all night with no idea WTF to do. Turned out OK, I guess.
And I had to punch a woman in a bar one night. 2nd husband. Neighborhood place. I was chatting with a friend to my left, my late husband to my right. Woman, very drunk woman took the seat to his right. They’re having a conversation and I guess he’s getting annoyed as she keeps making her point by banging on his arm. I notice, he looks at me and I see that he’s gathering himself up (he’d asked her several time to stop hitting him) and I know he’s gathering himself up to smack her. A quick calculation on my part and I come to the conclusion that she’d be better off if I hit her. So I reached across him and bopped her on the nose.
She went down. The bartender quick had some guys grab her, escort her screaming drunk ass out the door, and locked up and turned the lights off. The weird thing was that I had joined my then husband after work, so all this went down while I was wearing a dress and heels.
This reminded me of an incident that may not fit the OP’s question exactly, but I think it’s worth including in this thread anyway.
A place where I was a regular years ago was a place where no trouble ever happened. It was populated mainly by regulars, all of whom had known each other for years, though it welcomed strangers, many of whom eventually became regulars. Some didn’t, and that was fine, as long as they behaved on the one to a few occasions when they came in. Still, such a quiet little gathering place, where newbies and regulars tended to behave, had no need of a bouncer.
One newbie chose not to behave. He made a few lewd remarks to the lady regulars, he made a few threatening remarks to the male regulars who didn’t make enough room for him at the bar, and so on. When the owner, who was a woman in her 50s, asked him to leave, he responded, “Yeah, bitch? Make me.”
This attracted the attention of one of our friends. He had been a martial-arts champion, and a hand-to-hand combat instructor in the Canadian Armed Forces, and he looked like a badass (which he obviously could be); but he calmly and unthreateningly backed up the owner’s request. “Hey, pal, the owner doesn’t want you here. Why don’t you just leave? I’ll make sure your tab is on the house. No harm done.”
But the guy wanted to escalate things. Our friend handled everything calmly, and never lost his cool, though the guy was obviously spoiling for a fight. Our friend finally said, “Okay, pal, you want something. Well, we can do that, but it’s not going to be in here. What do you say to the parking lot?” The guy agreed, and our friend graciously swept out his arm in the direction of the door, and said, “After you.”
So with the guy leading, and our friend following, they headed for the door. The guy opened it and exited–at which point, our friend pulled the door closed, and threw the lock. He came back to the bar, and said something like, “The best bar fights are the ones that never get started,” and went back to his beer.
The guy pounded on the door for about five minutes, before he gave up and left. The owner bought our friend a beer. We congratulated our friend on his thinking, and went back to discussing the game that was on TV.
Our parents were right. It DOES matter who our friends are. LOL
I must live in a worse neighborhood than I thought. I couldn’t begin to count how many bar fights I have seen. The vast majority ended quickly without serious injury but I have also seen brutal beatings that left the looser with life time disabilities.
Good thing you’re a HoneyBadger; l hear they’re kinda fierce.
If your icon is really a pic of you you look the part of an elder stateman of the bar fight scene. The sort who doesn’t start much but finishes a lot more than he starts. 
I read this part from your cited 2005 article,
A very Colorado vibe pervades Charlie’s—you only want to hang out here as a last resort. We didn’t talk to anyone there because we don’t talk to hippies.
And thought, "Damn. Vice has changed a bunch in the last 15 years.
Drinking in a bar on an Native American reservation strikes me as a very novel experience—I had thought most were dry—and a spectacularly bad idea. Doesn’t seem that bad though from the article.