Fight Night!

I play basketball on Wednesday nights with my friends whenever I'm in town (which is not a lot lately). After we're done at about 10:30 we head over to the gas station, buy some drinks (mine is usually free as I've undoubtedly dominated somebody else, which in turn means I've earned a free drink on their dime:) ) and sit in the back of Britton's truck and hang out like some high school boys for a few minutes. Hey, we've even had some high school girls pull a u-turn to swing back past us to check us out! (After they saw we were a bunch of fat, 20-something married men instead of teenage boys they quickly took off--we admitted that it is unusual at 11 pm to see a group of grown men hanging out like this).

Anyways, that is not the point of the post, I'm just rambling. This past Wednesday we were talking about all of our old-time fights, post-game brawls, etc. After I left I got to thinking about fight night, definitely one of the funnest nights I've ever had.

If you've ever read my blog, it will be easy to picture the scene, as it is basically the same for any memory that related to teenage years---a bunch of dudes hanging out on a weekend night with no girls and nothing to do. We were at Jacob's house causing a ruckus. A couple guys start wrestling around and another decides to come in as a third party and deliver a devastating cheap shot elbow to the back! Hilarity ensues as we all start laughing at the tool who just took the blow (I can't remember who it was). Jacob's mom kicks us out of her house becuase we're causing too much ruckus, but now our adrenaline is all pumped up and we need to have some type of "fight club" night immediately. Ben offer's his house up as his parents aren't home. . . it's on!

The rules were as such: 1) no hitting the face. We formed a cirlce in Ben's front room, Kyle and I would usually get the action going by jumping in the middle and starting to fight, then other guys would jump in to try and cheap shot us: elbows to the back, knees to the thigh, kidney shots, stomach blows, etc. Even though you were in pain, it was so fun becuase everybody would jump in. . . while you were receiving a cheap shot to the back, you could turn around and deliver your own cheap shot to somebody else! Jeff started taking too many shots to his thigh; after a round of brawling he pulled up his shorts to reveal a monster bruise that pretty much covered the whole side of his thigh. Once we saw the weak spot, everybody was gunning for it the rest of the night. During one round I grabbed him and went in to knee him in the thigh once again; already in pain, he moved his leg outward to avoid the blow to the thigh, so instead he took a knee to the nuts! That floored him for a while, we outlawed knees or punches to the groin immediately after that:).

Once while standing on the side, Ben came up and stood in the middle of Kyle and I, then proceeded to extend his arms to both sides and land direct hits in both of our chests. He ran, we caught him, we pummeled him.

Highlight of the night, Chris Johnson was the only guy there who didn't participate. He stood on the outside of the circle up against the wall all night. We all tried to get him to come in and fight but he refused, instead just watching all night long. After a couple hours we were all beat (pun intended!) and laying around on the floor moaning in our pain. Whether he thought he was being funny or thought it was his opportunity to act tough, I don't know, but suddenly he jumped in the middle of the room screaming, "Bring it on!" There were no cheap shots to anybody else on that round, just all 10 or so of us pounding Chris Johnson. If somebody had walked in they would've thought we'd grabbed a guy off the street and dragged him in to beat him up. So classic!

I remember waking up the next morning with all types of knots in my back from all the elbows I took the night before. I was sore for a couple days. We tried to recreate the fight night multiple times after that, never to the same effect. I'm sure now it'd end up with somebody breaking a rib or something (I didn't get hurt that night, but I of course dislocated my shoulder on nearly every other night we attempted it). Teenage boys and fighting, too prime!