Getting into a fist fight in old-time Phoenix



Speaking for myself, I don't like to fight, or even argue. I enjoy discussing things with intelligent people, and hearing about different points of view, even political and religious, but I dislike fighting, or arguing. There really is a difference, and the difference has to do with whether something will seem to lead to a fist fight.

Fisting fighting, or bare-knuckle fighting, has always been a popular pastime, and would have been very common in old-time Phoenix. Putting on boxing gloves, or using the Marquess of Queensbury Rules, during a heated political discussion would have been ridiculous.

Of course, you would never know if the man you were fighting with might not pull a knife, or a gun. As you know, there are no rules in a knife fight, and really there are no rules in a fist fight. Biting and kicking may seem unsportsmanlike, but they would have been used to help drive home a point about whether a particular candidate was suitable for office.

I've been lucky. I learned just enough karate back in my twenties to learn not to fight, or even provoke. My sensei, who was a 9th-level black belt, was several feet shorter than me and considerably lighter. And he could have taken me down with a single punch. It was a good early lesson for me to learn to smile and make friends, and never, ever, think that I could "lick" someone just because they were smaller than me.

I've only seen a real bar fight once in my life, back in a dive bar in Los Angeles near where I lived in the 1980s. I had stopped in just to see what it was like inside (and it was awful), ordered myself a beer, and was sitting there when two old guys (about the age I am now, I guess), started arguing, and one of them hit the other, who fell off his bar stool. No one in the bar reacted at all, and he got back up and they continued drinking together. And it makes me wonder how much of this stuff goes on all of the time, and has for years.

In Western movies, fights are traditionally done by the two opponents taking turns swinging and neatly hitting each other on the chin. As someone who did a lot of play fighting with my brothers as a kid, I know that real combat between two men would be more like that, messy, pushing, shoving. And only the people who knew boxing would have done a roundhouse. Although there would have been a lot of men in old-time Phoenix who could box, although learning boxing isn't as popular now.

Since I learned how to throw a punch, I can recognize if an actor in a movie can or can't do it. It's like swinging a golf club - once you know it, you recognize it. And speaking for myself, I'd rather not bust up my knuckles, or my nose, in a fist fight. Why can't we be friends?

Image at the top of this post: Flying over downtown Phoenix in 1927.

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