Last night I was out grabbing some drinks with a couple friends when we saw two guys beating the shit out of each other in the middle of the street. People were just standing around watching and about 2 minutes, a couple of cops arrive on foot and broke it up and held the guys until a cop car arrived. I never really know what possesses people to get into a fight. I get it as a reaction to being pushed too far and snapping, but over slight grievances or some insults thrown around is something I'll never understand. Do people really have that much vulnerable pride that needs defending? I've gotten into a handful of small altercations, but nothing thats ever been a real fight, and I enjoy pushing people's buttons. One instance in particular was in college when some guy at our party decided that since a girl would not hook up with him, he figured he'd get retribution by trying to masturbate into her purse. He was caught red handed and I had him dragged behind the party house and held by 2 others while I hit him. His nose broke and he had a badly bruised lip, but he had it coming. He never reported the incident or anything and that was the end of it (but the girl pressed charges and rightfully so). Otherwise, I've always been much more of a lover than a fighter. It just isn't worth it. Focus: Any memorable physical fights that you've been in with someone? What happened? Alt Focus: How do you try to deescalate and solve an issue before it explodes?'
Now that I carry a gun everywhere, I actively go out of my way to avoid situations where I think they may escalate to begin with. I just smile and say "You'll have to forgive me for bumping into you, I'm a very big klutz." or something similar. I find people generally don't make a fuss unless they are drunk and I'm in a bar.
Yes, yes they do. I knew a few guys who would get into a confrontation over the most minor slights. It was insane. I never understood it, everyone is out to have a good time, why are you going to fight? FOCUS: It didn't reach fight stage, but it was probably the closest I have ever been to getting in a fight. I'm out with some friends at a bar where we know the bartender and get unlimited drinks for 10 bucks. I'm feeling horrid, have a pounding headache so I'm not really feeling it. There is this drunk guy from Spain there, he starts trying to talk to my friends about his business ideas, I tell them to ignore him cause he is too damn drunk. My friends are idiots and keep talking to him. An hour later we can't get rid of him. Bartender wants to cut him off and throw him out, but feels bad. I leave go to the store to get Tylenol. Aside from the bartender we are the only 4 people in the bar. I put my head down on the bar praying for the sweet release of death to end this headache. Out of nowhere I feel hands on my shoulders massaging me...I bolt up, spin around, my hand already balled into a fist. Spanish guy there is shocked and wide eyed. Me: "Dude! What the fuck! Seriously, what the fucking fuck!" Spanish Guy: "I thought you could use a massage" Me: "Seriously? Get the fuck away before I hit you!" Friends are standing by the side trying to comprehend what happened. Spanish guy goes down to the other end of the bar, where the bartender after seeing this gives him his check and tells him he has got to go. Apparently, after I put my head down, he excused himself from my friends and just walked over to me like it was nothing. They didn't even realize where he was going and thought he was going for a smoke until he was behind me. ALT-FOCUS:I've always been of the school of thought of buying the person a drink. It's worked before in the past. Failing that, since I'm usually not the one escalating the situation, it is usually a friend. The best way is to just drag them away. Shit isn't worth getting into a fight over.
There is a weird, primal electricity to fights. I remember the jolt you would get when a fight broke out in HS or even in college. But I think it was around the time I saw an innocent bystander get his jaw broken by a big dude who decided to swing at anyone during a bar fight in college that I realized it was just not worth it. The trivial shit that people fight about is just insane to me. I was just in Austin and a semi-large fight broke out in front of a bar because the line was taking awhile, two bros tried to skip, a bouncer stopped them, guided them (albeit a bit forcefully) back around the ropes, and they both turned and started swinging. FOCUS: As Ive mentioned here in a few stories, I try to avoid fights at all costs. I'm 29, its not worth it 95% of the time, and this isn't two idiot suburban kids wailing on each other, who knows what the fuck is going on at a bar or whatnot. Ive landed two punches in my life, both on drunk dudes who pushed/swung at me in bars, both fizzled after that. Not that I'm Mike Tyson but more that punch landed or not, its better to move before swarms of bros decide to jump in. Ive gotten close to fights when backing up my friends, but my friends, by and large, are smart enough to not let it get past the yelling/shoving phase. Short of defending a gf/wife/one of my sisters, I can't see being the aggressor ever again in my life, its just not in my nature. ALT-FOCUS: Distance. Thats the best diffuser for me. If you want to continue to smooth things over later, fine, but in the immediate, just getting scarce. Otherwise, if I'm not directly involved, I look for another seemingly calm member of the group and try to build a bridge that way. I do my best to avoid drunk fools seeing red.
People find me intimidating. I don't really get it, my self image is of a teddy bear and computer dork - but I'm 6'1 and a big guy - and fuck, my avatar is a real photo of me. I look kind of intense. For the most part, people think it's not worth the risk to find out if I can actually fight. And while I've trained traditional jiujitsu and muay thai/western kick boxing - competition was a long fucking time ago, and my wrists are fucked and my shoulders mostly fucked - and I'm way out of shape - I'm very grateful that intimidation usually works to avoid fights. I'm generally pretty good at talking people down though. I'm a fairly calm and confident sort of person, which pairs nicely with looking intimidating to slow people down and make them think a bit. I've been in a few minor fights - almost entirely at bars, where I was engaged in what a bouncer I knew once called violent deescalation, or just enough fighting to keep shit from getting any worse until the security staff could arrive to clear shit up. Honestly, none of them were particularly memorable. More than a decade ago, I was mugged twice, and stupidly fought back both times - I was ludicrously lucky to not end up badly injured (both guys had (shitty) knives. I've only thrown the first punch once, and that was in highschool - it's just not my nature.
I've never been a fighter, so I've enjoyed one of the benefits of getting older, which is that this situation almost never arises anymore, and is easy to defelct if it does. I've never been in real slugfest. I knocked a guys tooth out once in Atlanta after a douche who offered to drive bunch of people home instead took us on a wild car ride that nearly got us killed. Another time I went after a guy who was hasseling one of my sister's friends. After some yelling at each other the guy rushed me, and I grabbed his arm and swung him into the side of the limo waiting for him. Yes, the limo. It turns out the guy I was grappling with was there with 9 other guys - all rugby players- who had booked a limo to NYC from Buffalo to see the Bill/Jets game the next day. They just happened to stop at the bar I was in. The guy I was dealing with was hammered, and I could handle him. Nine other dudes? Hello hospital bed. Luckily, eight of them were still in the bar, and the second dude outside was fairly sober and tried to break things up - although all this did was allow the first guy to reach over his shoulder and pop me in the face once before the bouncers came running out, and that ended it. To this day I still despise Bills fans.
Do fights in elementary school count? Because I did all of my physical fighting back then. I had a reputation as a kid of being ruthless in a fight. I didn't do a lot of slapping like most girls and focused more on gut-punches and choking. By the time I got to middle school, they started implementing a policy where fighting got you arrested. I'd also gotten control of my temper by then, so it wasn't an issue.
I started two fights in my life, both with the same kid, both times I got the shit kicked out of me. First one his buddies all jumped me after I tried sucker punching him, second a few days later I was talked into a one on one rematch and lost straight up. My college roommate was a fighter and I have countless stories of him starting brawls at college parties I was at. I never took part in any of them other than trying to break people apart and calm the situation down. Im short and non intimidating so I have always gone out of my way to avoid fights because low and behold for every short dude who has to defend his ego there is a dude an inch taller or more that wants to stroke their ego on what they assume will be an automatic win based height advantage alone. But the Napoleon complex thing will never be seen as a two way street so there is no sense arguing. I don't know if normal or tall sized people get the same amount of shit but I noticed a lot during college, having a girl with me at college parties/bars increased other dudes willingness to start shit over nothing 10 fold.
Any fight stories I have aren't terribly exciting or interesting. I've started only a handful, lost most of them, and the few that I've won were mostly by slim margins. I've been the target many times, lost most of those too. I've threatened a lot of people with violence, for both good and shitty reasons, and looking back I'm not sure if I would've or could've followed through on many of them. I'm not a good fighter, but I'm native and I'm ugly, so that gives me a bit of street cred, depending on the situation. I can certainly take a beating though. Hoo-fucking-ray! I will say that I enjoy fighting though. I enjoy the adrenaline, the primal feeling of it, the bit of knowledge about yourself that you come away with. Started a fight club years and years ago and had a lot of fun with it. No anger, no hate, no grudges. Just combat. As far as de-escalation? A few years back, before the wife, I would never back down. I got stomped quite a few times and it was always pride that got my ass beat. Now, with something to lose? Get the fuck out of there. Leave, ASAP. Your pride will heal. If you have something to lose, fighting is an excellent way to lose it.
After getting my ass handed to me through most of school through freshman year of high school, I actually became a pretty good fighter. Mostly because I did it a lot (a big mouth and little body will foster that). Even though I was still small from my freshman through junior years, I did just fine for the most part (did take a few beatings). By my senior year, I won most of the fights I was in. Broke a few noses, stomped a few folks into my late teens, then decided I was a pacifist. I haven't had a fight in about 22 years, I have no intention of ever having a physical altercation again. I'm really good at talking people down. I'm very calm, and usually most people see me as friendly, so when I was bartending I could always de-escalate a situation. Still can, but very little call for it nowadays.
I have not been in a fight in a very long time, 25 years long time, but the last good one I was in was with my older brother. Since my parents decided it was a good idea to adopt 8 children and send them to private Christian school from about 5th grade on I had a job and most of the money I made went to pay for said "better" education. A job that I got in third grade was paperboy, every fucking day I had to get up early and deliver papers. By the time I got to highschool the routes had been combined and my brother and I were doing about 350 papers every morning which we would deliver in the van my parents had procured to show off all the different races of kids that had bought along the way. I had grown to dislike him over the years and still to this day I do not like him, but this particular morning I knew there was a blow out coming, he almost ran over a guy on a bike at the beginning of our route and I started chiding him about driving like shit, he rolled up a paper tight and smashed me in the face and a little blood started coming out of my nose. We screamed at each other for the next 10 minutes until we were in the middle of a condo complex at which point he said if you have a problem with me get out of the van so out I went. He and I had fought many times and I always took the moral high ground of not punching him in the face but he had no morals than and still does not so he always went for the face, this time was no different, I think it was about 5 minutes of punching, kicking, choking and swearing in the common area of this complex lit up by the van lights when around the corner comes a friendly Phoenix PD officer wanting to know what the fuck we are doing at 4 in the morning fighting. My brother, the quick on his feet liar, explains that we had a minor disagreement and we were just wrestling like loving brothers do, to which johnny law responded pointing at me, "Why does he have cut on his face and why is his shirt ripped to shreds?" I said nothing the whole time as my brother tap danced his way out of it and we were sent on our way. That is the last physical altercation we ever had, he did break into my house one time when I was sleeping and I pointed a gun at him but that is a different story.
I'm pretty sure I've posted about this before, but maybe not so whatever. Growing up I was in fights seemingly every other day, it was just what we did. I was always the little guy but would never back down and I knew how to handle myself, so when the bigger guys would come at me thinking it was an easy win, they quickly realized it wasn't. Once I got into my teens I went from being the little guy to the somewhat bigger guy. I started training in various martial arts and haven't been in a fight outside of the ring since. There have been plenty of times when I've been out and a friend gets a little too drunk or some dude bro is just looking for trouble, but I've always been able to calm the situation down and keep everyone out of jail. Back in the day, a fight didn't have nearly the same consequences as it does now. I am by no means a tough guy or Billy Badass, but I know that as an adult if I were to go all out on a stranger that I have the ability to permanently damage him, and he could potentially do the same to me. Outside of certain circumstances there just isn't a justifiable reason to get into that kind of altercation and deal with the repercussions that go along with it. I love to fight, but I keep it in the gym and the ring where it belongs.
Any fight between elementary schoolers carries very little risk of actual injury, unless you tangle the sociopath who brings a knife to school at age 12 (or a biter, see below). I found kid fights to be in a completely different league from fighting as an adult or in the later teen years. I "fought" all the time in elementary school. These fights typically amounted to glorified wresting matches or essentially going shot for shot. Even fights with dudes much bigger or a couple years older, we rarely walked away with anything other than bruised egos. There was, however, this one time in grade six when I picked a fight with an eighth grader who had been harassing me since the beginning of the school year. I didn't know how to throw a punch, so when he'd run at me I'd put him in a headlock and take him down. After about the third takedown he decided he'd had enough and instead of backing down, he bit my nipple, really hard. A few days later both our classes ended up in the gym locker room together, and when someone from his class asked about the red mark around my areola, the dude literally bragged about biting me. I guess he felt it was better to own it right away before I could rip him a new one in front of his classmates. What a weird town I came from.
I'm quite happily a giant wuss and avoid the shit out of fighting. It doesn't really come up for me a lot since, for me, the first step in deescalation is not getting into angry arguments with the kind of dickhead who thinks violence is how you solve interpersonal problems. If that doesn't work then I'll tend to just leave. One of the hardest things to really internalize as an adult is the skill of realizing that your pride does not have to be affected by random assholes. So I just walk away from bullshit. The other thing I can do, if it comes up, is just start agreeing. Seriously, people find it very very hard to argue with you if you just agree with everything they say. If I had to fight? Well, I'd probably lose I guess. But if I had any agency in the matter, my view of fighting is pretty black and white. If you're attacking me then my goal is either to escape or cripple you so you can't injure me. Fighting is not fun for me, nor a sport, the rules for me are about self-preservation. One exception: Defense of others. It's never come up, but I like to think I'd fight to defend someone else.
The only person I've been in full-blown bloody fistfights with is my older brother. We've never liked each other much and had to share a bedroom for years, so combining that with us starting youth wrestling back when I was 8 years old and he was 10 meant some really good fights. The last fight was when I was 18 and he was 20, as that was when my size really caught up on him and he couldn't really physically threaten me anymore. Aside from my brother I don't really like to fight with people. I'm not a big, imposing guy and keep my mouth shut so I don't attract trouble, and I've never been in a situation where I've needed or really wanted to fight with someone yet. I'm confident I could handle most guys around my size as I wrestled for a long time and can give and take blows pretty well, but from what I've seen the kind of idiot to start shit is not alone and the last thing I'd want is to catch a boot to the head or ribs (or worse) while I'm beating up their friend. Plus, pretty much all fights I've seen have led to police and charges and stuff I don't wanna deal with. A really fucked up event happened in my hometown earlier this year and I have connections to both of the guys involved. Some hot emotions and very poor decisions led to several lives being permanently changed forever. Makes you realize just how grave the consequences can be. You'd need to get physical with a family member or good friend for me to turn violent, otherwise it just isn't worth it.
What can I say, it was shocking and kind of took me out of the fight mentally rather than provoking any sort of rage. I just couldn't believe anyone would actually do something like that. It wasn't like he was in any real danger, he was just pissed that a sixth grader was making him look foolish. Anyway, years later I heard from a mutual friend that he attempted to initiate a circle jerk with a bunch of dudes while high on E.
Guess I should have worded that a little better. What I meant was during pretty my entire childhood I was involved in fights and that remained true throughout all of my teenage years. I didn't hit my growth spurt until mid way into sophomore year of high school so being the small guy fighting guys that were much bigger and stronger was not something I looked forward to. Scrapping with what was essentially a kid in a grown mans body while being a lot less developed is a completely different ball game from elementary school "fights".
Focus: I dont that I would say any of the fights I have ever been in were memorable. I've kicked a few asses and had my ass kicked. Although sitting here thinking about there was a fight with a friend when we were teens. He was a couple years older, couple inches taller, and had a longer reach. Every time I came in closer he connected right to the head. I'd go down, he'd tell me to stay down, I'd get back up. Finally he connected and next thing I knew I was waking up with my face in the dirt. I said, " Fuck this." and went home. Twenty plus years we're still good friends, now of more equal size, and we've drunkenly laughed about it more than once. Alt focus: Now that I'm older I have no desire to get into a fistfight. De-escalation in the rare times I've had confrontations has been a simple "Don't." "Get the fuck out of here." or something like that, which has worked because it seems like it's always some little guy who has a chip on his shoulder but isn't too far gone stupid. I'm 6'1, 260 and it was always the smaller guys. Bump into a guy my size or bigger ? "Excuse me." "No problem." I've also bought someone a drink. Told him we were both drunk, and if he wanted to roll around like a couple idiots til someone broke it up, fine. Or I'd buy him a beer and we'd forget whatever transgression happened. He took the beer. Thank God, because it was all I could do to walk that night.
I legitimately got in a fist fight with my sister where it ended up with her tearing the shirt off of me and pummeling me to the ground. It was her shirt, she didn't want me to wear it. Pyhrric victory! She also punched me once after I had just gotten out of the shower. Nothing is weirder than trying to fight when you're naked. I gave up fighting with her after that. It would just never get funnier.