Yep. A buddy of mine from high school had a couple of pot possession charges against him when he got into a dust-up with a bouncer about two years ago. He's still in jail. Fighting on the street is an almost universally retarded thing to do.
I was never a fighter growing up, pretty much based on the fact that I was undersized most of my life, but didn't have a Napoleon complex. Kids would try to punk on me, I wouldn't fight back, and everyone moved on. My roommate however has magnificent short man syndrome. But aside from wrestling with frat brothers and fighting with his older brother, I don't think he's ever been in a fight, he just sticks to loudly talking about how he would rearrange people's faces or curbstomp the dude that was talking to a girl he was interested in. God he's an obnoxious drunk sometimes... I always wanted to be in a fight when I was in college. Not so much starting one, but backing up my friends. Couple of my good friends from college still, to this day, talk about my desire to "Casey Affleck" some dude in the face referencing this scene from Good Will Hunting... My actual "fight" experiences have both been one punch affairs. One I've mentioned before...My senior year of college, I was at my favorite bar dancing with a cute younger girl. The song ended and she turned around to talk to me as the next song started. Some drunken fratstar wearing a fucking puka shell necklace, in Ohio in 2008, comes up behind her and starts freaking all over her, getting some early gropes in. Seeing her face and reaction, I tell him to chill out. He kind of smirks and tells me to fuck off. She tries to step forward and he grabs a belt loop or two. So I tell him again to back off, and put my hand on his shoulder. Instantly he hops off, and pushes me hard in the chest. I sort of compose myself, surprised at the escalation, and then in a move that shocked even me, just haul back and punch him across the right temple as hard as I can. He staggers backwards into a pool table and falls on it as I feel a pair of hands grab my shoulders hard. I turn around and a bouncer, while laughing, says "I think you should go dude." He clears a few people away from the door and I quickly dip out. Up until recently, my college roommate had a voicemail of me calling him as I jogged home "G, whats up, I don't know why you left. But I just punched some freshman in the face. It was great, I'm getting a bagel, see you at home." All the while I was giggling like a moron. So much adrenaline. Second time was remarkably similar and more recent. In the spring, I went to a EDM concert/rave downtown. Unfortunately as I realized once we got there, it was 17+, which was ridiculous. Anyways, the night was going ok, I had ripped plenty of shots to compensate for not rolling on E like some of my friends, and was dancing my boredom away. As I was walking back from the bathroom, a really cute girl (who in retrospect likely wasn't a day over 19) grabbed me and we were talking/dancing shortly thereafter. Not 5 min in, some bro in a jersey and half-cocked neon snapback grabbed me by the collar and screamed to roll off (insert teenage skank name). I asked if it was his girl, fully prepared to apologize for the misunderstanding. He replied "No, motherfucker, but it could be." I don't know what the fuck kind of justification that was, but as I was processing it, he, no lie, kind of cuffs me behind the ear. Yes, he pulled out an escalation move usually reserved for old Jewish grandmothers. So I just kind of spin and swing and catch him flush in the jaw. As I'm doing that, I realize that there are 3-4 other dudes with him and my friends are about 15-20 feet away. So I walk towards them, and my roommate looks at my face and immediately says "Shit, who did you just punch?" He and another friend put down their drinks and we turn and look towards the fluorescent douche crew and I start to prepare for the worst...and instead got flipped off and it ended. That last instance in particular taught me that I am too old to be doing that bullshit and I'm lucky that nothing worse has come of it. Short of defending one of my sisters or a SO against something egregious, I can confidently say I won't be swinging on anyone anytime soon. Because as AlmostGaunt said, fighting is just stupid and outside of a college environment, in the "real world", is an awesome way to ended up in jail or the ER.
Like a weird majority of people in here was too small to really be a fighter or have enough confidence in myself to win fights so i stayed away from fighting. I've been in two fights my adult life that I started and put myself into. I lost both in semi spectacular fashion. I've told it before so Ill keep it short. First, drunk as fuck I tried sucker punching a guy that was mimicking me at a party at his house as he was kicking everyone out. I landed probably three punches before him and his roommates and a few random people beat the fuck out of me and then turned and roughed up my friend who was just trying to get me the fuck out of there. Second was a few days later when I let my roommate talk me into going back and getting payback by starting a brawl. We went over with a few guys but ended up agreeing on a one on one fight between me and the kid I sucker punched. I tried shooting in for a double leg like in my good old year and a half wrestling days. I didn't get to follow through as he cracked me in the head and got on top of me and rained down about five shots to my temple before asking if I had enough. I said yeah. I had vertigo issues for weeks. He later died of an OD on spring break in Mexico. I went to his funeral as we had patched it up after that. My roommate and some college friends were real bruisers though and I've seen a countless number of fights living and partying with them. I normally stayed on the outside and would usually try to break things up. There really is no good fucking reason ever to fight. Particularly when you are young and drunk at parties. I am surprised no one ended up in jail. A buddy on my softball team had a friend doing ten years for assault for dislocating someone's jaw in a random bar fight, he was like 80k in debt for lawyer and doctors fees. Ruined his fucking life.
This thread reminds me of the time I got beat up after a football game, almost ten years ago. Went to the game with a couple co-workers, and we're driving out of the neighbourhood next to the stadium, with cars coming out of every alley and front lawn that charged for parking. Basically, a clusterfuck of cars. I don't even remember who cut who off, but my co-worker, who was driving, yells out his window and calls someone else an asshole, then says if that car catches up to us, he's getting out and throwing down. That's seriously all it took. So of course they catch up and the guy in their car was just as stupid as the guy in ours, except their guy, it turns out, was actually willing to fight. So he gets out, and our guy gets out, and it's obvious that our guy has about a hundred pounds on their guy, but all he does is sort of grab his shirt and like, shake him a bit...kinda. So I finally get out of the backseat, after my other co-worker moves the seat up, and I'm thinking, since no punch has actually been thrown, it's just two idiots yelling, and I do my best mediator/referee impression to try and break it up. That's when I got whipped across the top of the head with a studded belt, punched in the face and kicked in the head after I fell. And just like that, fight broken up! So I'm in the backseat again, using left over McDonald's napkins to clean my blood. My one co-worker, who did absolutely nothing, is silent, and the other, who caused absolutely everything, is talking about how he "doesn't know what's wrong with me. I just had a kid and that guy could have had a gun." I never hung out with them socially again. A better, second-hand story: My buddy is a great fighter, with absolutely none of the psycho attributes. Very calm dude, even when he's beating the piss out of someone, but again, not in the psycho way. He's also a very good poker player. So he's in Vegas, and a dude at the table over is arguing real loud with his lady friend/escort, but not enough for them to call security. He's a big dude, and drunk, so everyone is just keeping their heads down at their cards, until my buddy speaks up and says leave her alone and settle down so they can all play in peace. Big Drunk Guy says something back, but mostly just escalates his anger towards his lady friend. Then he grabs her tiny arm and violently shakes her. My buddy stands up and tells him he's not touching her like that again. Big Drunk Guy walks over, telegraphing a punch as much as you could. My buddy Silva's his way out of it, and lands an absolute monster shot, knocking him out cold. Fast forward a few minutes to when my buddy is in "the back" with security. "Don't worry, we watched the whole thing on video. We know you didn't start anything." "So...it's recorded?" "Yes." "So...can I see it?" They laugh and tell him no, he can't, but assured him it was one of the best knockouts they'd seen in a while.
I wouldn't really call it a fight. At the end of the day in MOS school, everyone ended up having to form up in the parking lot in front of the building so we could all march down in formation. Before we could march down, we needed to have a sergeant make announcements. As a result, we usually ended up BSing while waiting for someone to remember that there were 150 guys waiting to go home. I got into a little argument with one of our company's shitheads. Big, ghetto black kid from Chicago who constantly liked to boast about how shitty his "hood" was, etc. Completely irredeemable; you could hold a gun to this kid's head and he wouldn't do his job. He'd been making fun of some other kid who was one of those small nerdy WoW guys. Being a nerd myself, but much larger, I had a really low tolerance for the Jocks vs Nerds bullshit. I went over to him and told him, "High school's over. Shut the fuck up, stop being an idiot." He told me to mind my own business, I grabbed the other kid, and walked off. I heard a bunch of people go "Oh shit" and turned around just in time to get nailed in the face with a rock. I saw red, charged, tackled him, and started whaling on him. No one tried to pull me off; they just watched and laughed. After a few punches, I realized he wasn't moving anymore and got off him. He stayed down for a while, but then magically got up when the sergeant came out. He then started whining about how I'd hit him because he was black, etc. The sergeant asked a couple witnesses, who all said that he threw a rock at me. I ended up saying, "Dude, I didn't hit you because you're black. I hit you because you're Jewish." Laughter ensued, the sergeant told Shithead to shut the hell up, and we went about our business.
I did two years of Wing Chun (Kung Fu) training; didn't take it too seriously and it was more a case of getting fit etc. In the second year I did some sparring, trying to apply what we had been taught. I soon realised how damn hard it can be to have the presence of mind, speed and endurance to apply the techniques you have learnt when the other guy is throwing punches (albeit "sparring" punches) and kicks at you. Was a heap of fun though.
I've been training different disciplines for about ten years now and haven't fought outside of a controlled environment for well over that. Growing up it was an almost everyday affair, but it was mainly the environment. If you had a problem with someone, you had it out and that was the end of it. That's not to say that there weren't plenty of opportunities in between my school days and now because like most of you, the dude bros eventually caught up and tried to start shit. Thankfully I've had the good fortune to be the voice of reason in the heat of the moment, so nothing ever came of the confrontations. I'm not the biggest guy by any means, 6'2 at about 180 lbs, but I can get my point across when I need to. I tend to be a little more on edge if I'm out with a large group that's bar hopping because I know that eventually something is going to happen and if everyone is shit faced and ready to throw down, then the chance of us all waking up in jail increases dramatically. Fighting just has too many consequences to justify it outside of self defense of yourself or loved ones. Nothing worse than nearly having to fight off 4 guys because your asshole buddy got too drunk.