I was at local bar in New Jersey. Since there was only 1 pool table, people would put their names on a board. I won the game so I checked to see who would play against me in the next game. I saw the name on the board and it was “Utah”. He wasn’t near the pool table so I yelled his name by the noisy bar. He gets up, comes to the table and puts in his quarters. All of a sudden, another guy goes up to “Utah” and says: “You’re not Utah. I’m Utah!”
This is (approximately) how the conversation went:
Utah 1: “My nickname has always been Utah! Why are you trying to rip it off?”
Utah 2: “I grew up in Utah! And thats what I’ve always been called!”
Utah 1: “But I put my name on the board so its my turn to play!”
Utah 2: “I don’t care about the pool game. I just don’t want you using my name!”
Utah 1: "Well it my name too!:
Utah 2: “F- You A-hole!”
Next thing you know, fists are flying. Two sensible people help break up the fight, but the rest of us are dying from laughter. Keep in mind that we’re in New Jersey where you don’t really get any special benefits by being from Utah.
I have another one which I’ll add later since its about time for lunch.
I didn’t witness this one but my friend was involved in it…
My friend was drinking in this bar for a couple of hours when his group decided to do flaming sambuca shots (You set the sambuca on fire and then drink it). My friend picks up his flaming shot glass but burns his fingers and drops the glass. It lands by the shoe of the guy (GUY 1) next to my friend (who was not part of their group). The lower part of GUY 1’s pants catch fire but no one notices. Another person (GUY 2) sees that GUY 1’s pants are burning and runs over to him and splashes water on them to put the fire out. Here’s the funny part: GUY 1 (whose pants were on fire) starts fighting with GUY 2 (who put the fire out) because GUY 2 splashed water on GUY 1. He does this instead of starting the fight with my friend who carelessly dropped a flaming shot of sambuca and set GUY 1’s pants on fire to begin with. Obviously, GUY 1 had no idea that his pants were ever on fire and believes that GUY 2 splashed water on him as some sort of practical joke. Poor GUY 2 never did get a chance to explain.
Stupidest fight I ever saw was in the doorway of a mens rest room.
I had just gone in and had to swiftly step aside for an ingnorant 'roid enhanced ape who was intent on proving his masculinity.
On his way out he bumped one of his huge shoulders against the door frame. I think he must have reckoned that someone had collided with him deliberately because he turned around rapidly looking for a fight and very nearly bashing his snout on said doorframe.
With this he became most agitated with the doorframe and proceeded to have a fist fight with it, complete with expletives ducking and dodging.
Once he was satisfied with himself he swaggered off as if to say ‘Now that taught it a lesson’.
I was at an all-day outdoor concert. Toward the end of the event, a fight broke out. When security didn’t stop it soon enough I noticed guys coming from everywhere to jump into the fight and start punching the nearest person. That was the stupidest fighting I had saw - because someone else was already fighting.
Everyone involved in this story is pretty drunk:
This guy, Ben, challenges me to arm wrestle him, and I kick his ass. This other guy, Seth, gets pissed because he thinks Ben let me win, and, according to him “Women gotta stand up for themselves, none of this being nice to them shit!” and starts to throw punches at Ben. Not me, but Ben. I, apparently, don’t have to stand up for myself in this situation.
About four or five years ago, the guys in my Hamptons share house decided to take a weekend off and hang out in New York. We were bar-hopping in SOHO and there was a group of about 15 of us.
We went into a bar that charged a $10 cover. As we all filed into the bar, we realized that the last guy in the line was getting hassled by the bouncer because he was wearing shorts, which was evidently against the dress code. Fine, we said, if he can’t get in, we’ll all leave. When we asked for a refund of the cover charge, the bouncer got all bent out of shape. After haggling and puffing chests, we all got our $10 back and were on our way to the next bar. As we filed out into the street again, the bouncer said something to one of our friends.
This particular friend is a Gold Gloves boxing champ who later got into Ultimate Fighting and studied Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu under Royce and Rickson Gracie. Immediately after hearing whatever comment it was that the bouncer made, he leapt over a police barricade, ran back into the entranceway of the bar, and dragged the bouncer back into the street. After a couple fancy moves, this guy subdued the bouncer, got him on the ground with his knees on his biceps, and delivered a series of open-palm slaps to the bouncer’s face.
It was a stupid reason to fight - mainly a male ego thing, but I was happy to finally see a big, tough bouncer put in his place.
Not actually witnessed, but told about in excruciating detail:
One of my friend’s fathers was drinking at a country& western bar with one of his friends, who did too much peyote as a Marine in VietNam and “hadn’t been quite right” since.
This person decides the bar is too quiet, remarks to Brett " Hey, watch this" and overhand throws, with spin, a heavy glass bar ashtray towards the dance floor. It hits some dude in a Western shirt squarely in the back, producing a meaty thud interspersed with a bone-shattering CRACK, whereupon the dude throws his arms up and utters a high, girlish scream of pain and anger, screams out “FUCK YOU, LUTHER!”
and proceeds to whale the living shit of the yokel next to him, causing a massive, Old-West style bar brawl.
Brett and his friend? Sitting at the bar laughing their asses off.
I’ve got a couple of interesting stories. The first one happened to me, but it’s not so much a “stupid” reason as it is a kind of bizarre situation to be in to begin with. I was shooting pool in a redneck bar, the guy I was shooting against happened to be mute. So during the game I was talking to someone, then turned back to the table to find the mute guy in my face. He’s threatening to smack me with his pool cue, and I’m completely clueless as to what just happened. I start talking, trying to ask him what I did to piss him off, forgetting he can’t tell me since he’s mute. Then I start thinking maybe I can get him to write it down or something, but everything’s a confused mess; he’s really pissed off and gives me a shove. I walked away and the bartender, who was a friend of mine, goes up and calms him down. I tried to make peace with him about an hour later, but he wouldn’t have any of it. I saw him a few days later, he was cool with everything then, but I never did figure out what that was all about. An awkward situation to be in.
Anyway, another time it was late at night and I was getting something to eat at an all night truck stop diner. There’s one table with a couple of truckers and their girlfriends, and another table with four college students. One of the truckers yells out, “Ah bet Ah’ve got the biggest pecker in this place!” One of the students says, “No, that’d be me!” or something like that. Trucker says, “Well, whoop it out!” Student stands up and jokingly acts like he’s unzipping his pants. Trucker gets impatient, yells, “Either put up, or shut up!” Student begins walking over to their table, then walks away, trucker gets up, goes after student, then both tables (except for the girls) get into it. People gettting shoved, punches thrown, I saw a knife flash out at one point. It goes on for a couple of minutes till the police get there. I just sat back and watched; it was pretty pathetic.
There was a girl in my class during senior year of high school who beat me up because i threw a cookie at her while I was in a car riding by her one afternoon.
Yeah, it was a dumb thing to do, but I don’t think i needed to get tracked down and punched in the nose for it.
Now that the pain is gone, in hindsight it looked pretty funny because it was an ace shot from a moving car at a moving target- the cookie exploded on impact.
While in college, I saw two professors almost get into a fistfight over a parking space. It was one of those situations where both cars pull into the parking lane at the same time, and there’s one space equidistant between them.
In my more violent youth (age 16), my friends and I (four of us) beat up a mall security guard that stopped us for shoplifting. We all just sort of started hitting him until he fell down then a few of us kicked him and we all ran off. We actualy hurt him pretty badly, he had some broken fingers and ribs as well as quite a few bruses.
We I got a month in juvy, and the others got about the same–not enough now that I look back on how stupid we were. I actualy saw the guy again a week or two ago and told him how much I regreted it, but I don’t think he wanted to hear it. Not that I can blame him.
Once saw two fellows come to blows when one refuted the other’s contention that Jan Michael Vincent was the “best Goddamned actor in the whole fuckin’ wide world.” This gentleman was not impressed by Vincent’s thespic abilities, and in ripost not quite up to classic Siskel-Ebert, avowed that Vincent was a “pussy.”
I might be breaking the rule of “have witnessed” in this post, but it stands to the “stupidest reason”.
It has to do with me just being to drunk to realize what is going on. For instance, I have this nice scar in my inner lip. Wouldn’t be there if I had been sober enough to realize why this guy in front of me wanted to fight. Sadly I wasn’t. I’ve also never found out the cause of that fight, but I still have the scar. That’s stupid isn’t it?
It’s also stupid that I have no idea why I wanted to get into a fight with a security guard. Even stupider that I realize it wasn’t my idea to fight, but the security guard’s, especially considering I was the one arrested. It’s stupid that if I hadn’t have been drunk I would have been able to defend myself somehow.
But then again, the stupidest reasons always belong to somebody else, don’t they?
Some of us were waiting outside a kebab van in Oxford for these two drunk students to get their kebabs. (For those of you, ah, unfortunate enough not to know about the “Oxford kebab van experience,” I’ll tell you that a “kebab” is quintessential after-pub grub: a pitta bread stuffed with strips of minced lamb, salad, chili sauce, sometimes coleslaw, and just about anything else that can be stuffed in. There are about five or six roving vans in Oxford that come out at night to sell these to drunken students.) Student #1 bites into his kebab, turns a face and yells, “There’s too much f----in’ chili sauce on this!” Student #2 then mocks Student #1 for being too wimpy to eat the kebab (I won’t repeat what was said exactly, in deference to our younger readers). Student #1 winds up and chucks his kebab square into #2’s face. There’s this split-second where #2 is standing there shocked, with chili sauce, mayo, lettuce and chunks of kebab meat all over his face. Cue the most vicious street fight I ever saw in Oxford.