Pugilist Punch: A Potent Shot Of Fighting in Sports

Powder keg (n):
1. A small, barrel-like container for gunpowder or blasting powder.
2. A potentially dangerous situation, especially one involving violent repercussions.


We all know the ingredients to create a powder keg. For those of you who don’t, definition number one, above, should tell you. You take a keg and fill it with gunpowder—the palpable consequences of messing with the keg’s equilibrium are well known and extremely violent, lending itself to its figurative second definition.

In professional sports, each game is a powder keg.

Mix brawny, male athletes who meticulously and laboriously hone their craft, a restricted playing area, and the desire to win and emotions can easily boil over into unsanctioned and flagrant abuses of equipment, personnel, and even fans.

Although pugilism purists always have boxing to fall back on along with the plethora of up-and-coming mixed martial arts federations, there are always those rare, albeit scintillating moments when bellicosity is unavoidable on the gridiron, the diamond, the wood, and especially the ice.

There are those who proclaim that fighting has nothing to do with sport. In fact, the very definition of a sporting gentleman would preclude them from fighting an opponent; however, the prevailing emotion in our modern-day major sports is that sometimes being a gentleman is no way to win. No way at all.

For the general sporting public, fighting is a guilty pleasure—something exciting, but wrong. People silently, or not so silently, wait for something to erupt when two rivals play each other or when things become overly physical in the wrong circumstances. Whatever the case is, the repetitious offerings of every fight, every skirmish, every brawl by ESPN, NHL network, VS and your local sports affiliates only corroborates what every one is thinking: Most people like this stuff.

Most examples of rough-housing in professional sports are of the illegal variety, meaning, the act was banned by the rules of the governing body of the respective sport. You know a lot of the famous incidences. In basketball, the infamous brawl between the Indiana Pacers and Detroit Pistons of November 19, 2004, better known as The Malice at the Palace, sent shockwaves throughout the sporting world. It was not the first time basketball players had come to blows, and no, it wasn’t the first time fans were involved, either. But the chaotic level that the brawl in question reached was so out of proportion with what we were used to seeing in an NBA game that it was very scary—mostly for fan, Charlie Haddad, who got sucker punched in the jaw by Jermaine O’Neal.

As for the chaos I referred to, nothing more needs to be said except the resulting penalties from that melee. Nine players were suspended for a total of 146 games, sacrificing $10 million dollars in salary, while five of those players were also charged with assault resulting in one year probation and community service, each. Five fans were also legally processed and charged, and one fan received a lifetime ban from The Palace in Detroit.


Another sport we normally regard as a peaceful pastime is baseball. Typically a calm and rhythmic game, baseball, under the right circumstances, can be just as heated and intense as any full-contact sport. Pitches thrown inside on a batter, spikes up when sliding into a base, A-Rod slaps, home-run watching, and other minor infractions can cause quite a stir with the opposition. Most baseball fights are bench clearing brawls, making any type of physical altercation in baseball national news. Unlike many hockey fights, baseball brawls don’t generally fly under the radar even though they occur substantially less often. And while the MLB has put the kibosh on airing their league-owned footage of fights on youtube, that does not stop me from posting a picture from a fight right here.

And here.











A sport that has surprisingly few fights that is an intensely violent sport is American football. There are arguments stating that the inherent physicality of the sport is what prevents things from getting out of hand often. Another possible justification for this paradox is that the players are simply more disciplined as a whole in the NFL as opposed to MLB or the NBA. Generally, gross misconduct represents at least a one-game suspension and/or monetary penalties. The NFL cracks down hard on anyone presenting an overly physical threat to another player. The following video of left tackle, Matt Light, of the New England Patriots and linebacker, Channing Crowder, of the Miami Dolphins gives us a glimpse of what can happen when emotions run high in a divisional football game.




For as minor a transgression as this looks to be compared to the rest of the action in an NFL game, Matt Light was fined $15,000 dollars for the incident and both players were immediately ejected from the game. Light was not suspended for another game, but at the time there was great outcry for him to be, and many viewed this as league favoritism shown to the Patriots by League Commissioner, Roger Goodell. This is but one example from football whose parent league has also done what they can to abolish league owned videos of fights on the internet, but in my humble opinion, it is the NFL who runs the tightest ship concerning personal conduct on the field.

The league with loosest personal conduct rules as pertaining to the field of play is the NHL. This is not to say that they peddle a chaotic product hell-bent on debauchery and no-holds-barred action, but it is to say that since its inception, the NHL has only penalized in-game fighting with, at most, a five-minute sit in the sin-bin.

The NHL has a great amount of history. It has its heroes and its villains, and throughout the storied history of the league, fighting has always been there as a remnant of the past, where men policed themselves. Fighting in hockey isn’t only about anger. It isn’t only about hurting your opponent. Those aspects are almost always there, but there is something greater at hand. Fighting in the NHL is about honor; it’s about picking up your team when you think they need it. It’s about protecting your players, especially your goalie, if the other team is taking liberties with them. Watch what happens when Keith Tkachuk, then of the St. Louis Blues takes a run at then Detroit Red Wings goaltender, Dominik Hasek:




Fighting in the NHL is regarded by some as a barbarous activity—some vestigial part left over from a pre-modern game. These people would have a point if NHL players were indiscriminately walking around picking fights with each other constantly. This is not the case. There are many games in which there is no fighting at all. When combatants do agree to drop the gloves there is more or less a code that these tough guys follow. Sometimes, it does get out of hand, though:




There is currently a small movement in the NHL to change some of the rules regarding fighting in their games. Some seem to feel that fighting for the wrong reasons is on the rise; that once a clean, hard body-check is thrown, it becomes inevitable that someone will retaliate. I have to agree that this is a trend. More and more players are finding themselves accountable for huge and sometimes reckless hits they throw on other players. I have no problem with this. It was fighting in the first place that was always lauded by the players for helping them police their own game. Fighting, they believed, made everyone accountable for their actions. This sentiment is what some are using for the argument against fighting now; that it will make players think twice about their actions and not throw huge hits.

I never knew accountability to be a bad thing. Have you?

Adding extra penalties to those who the referee feels “instigated” the fight is a silly amendment, as well. We read aloud from the NHL rulebook:

An instigator of an altercation shall be a player who by his actions or demeanor demonstrates any/some of the following criteria: distance traveled; gloves off first; first punch thrown; menacing attitude or posture; verbal instigation or threats; conduct in retaliation to a prior game (or season) incident; obvious retribution for a previous incident in the game or season…

To me, this covers any reason at all why one player would fight another, and also includes instances which are impossible to forgo in the instance of a fight. Things like, traveling a distance, removing gloves first, first punch thrown, et al. All of these things need to happen in order for a fight to occur. Is the NHL claiming that an instigator penalty (an extra two minutes on top of the five for fighting, plus a ten-minute misconduct) is doled out on a per-fight basis? It certainly is not.

There is no other sport where the players are as accountable in their actions to the other players. There is no sport that so liberally allows its constituents to have it out and let that determine the flow of the event. To a certain extent, yea, it may seem a bit anachronistic to let boys be boys to such a length, but the fans love it, and the longevity of the league and some of its more cryptic customs are a testament to what works and what will continue to excite fans. Besides, you really want to give this up?






Sometimes the powder keg’s equilibrium is left unmolested. But without a little explosion now and then, where would that leave sports fans? I don’t know, but I don’t want to find out. I leave you with this: