Saturday!…Saturday!…Saturday!…Saturday! Saturday night’s alright…
Now, I’m not one to condone only one night of the week for fighting to be accepted, but I am one to deem it acceptable in certain situations. The situation I find most reasonable is, keeping all the brutal Nic Cage jokes under wraps, in the defense or protection of your woman or family member. Well…I must say that I might just muster up the fists one day just so that I could meet John Malkovich, Steve Buscemi, Ving Rhames, or Dave Chappelle. Hell, I would love to have “How Do I Live” playing in the background for most of my day…
First there’s a difference between fighting and sports. I must state that I don’t pay any attention to the UFC stuff that gains a lot of media attention over the last few years, or boxing for that matter, but I suppose I can accept UFC as a sport…even though I have no interest in it.
We have all seen fighting in sports. What do we blame it on? Egos? Cultural upbringing? Tempers? The list is endless when it comes to actual “fights” in sports.
I’ll toss your way the instances I think about when fighting and sports come together. A bit of a history from mainstream sports…
Wayne Woodrow “Woody” Hayes spent over 30 years of his life coaching football, most notably at Ohio State University where he led the Buckeyes for many years against Bo Schembechler. What most people, including myself, remember Hayes for is the punch (or punches) he threw at an opposing player in the 1978 Gator Bowl, in addition to some outrageous acts aimed at officials in that game and previous ones. Simply, after 28 years of being the head coach, he was let go after his temper and anger got a hold of his hands.
Another event in days past is the Rudy Tomjanovich and Kermit Washington affair in 1977. I’m sure if I were to ask most people who these two men are, some might be able to point out that Tomjanovich coached the Houston Rockets in the NBA Championship years and that he enjoyed a solid Big Ten and professional basketball career. Kermit Washington is known, mostly, for only one event – an on-court tussle between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Houston Rockets, with Tomjanovich being on Houston’s active roster. After whistles blew because of Kareem Abul-Jabar and others shoving and elbowing, Washington threw a punch that fractured Tomjanovich’s skull and face, resulting in leaking spinal fluid amongst other things. He was knocked out cold.
Tomjanovich endured, came back, and is associated with the association. Washington has bounced around a bit, and he feels it’s because of the one punch he tossed. Details…
Why is hockey the only sports where “fighting” is allowed? It’s obviously not allowed as it is just tolerated (to a degree) as being part of the game. The only other sport that offers an analogy is baseball. Their “sweet chin music” or bean ball is almost like throwing a jab or two, right?
The bean ball is to protect your players, protect your stars, and to inform the opposing team you’re not going to put up with certain things. Player X pimps his homerun a little too much in the second inning? You hit our playmaker? Things happen. Hell, Nolan Ryan putting Robin Ventura in a headlock happened.
It’s hard to retaliate in football because there’s such a watchful eye on everything that happens now, and basketball does allow some payback action. Mostly coaches just grabbing ankles…JVG…
Anyone that watches hockey understands why the fighting exists. And if you’ve ever watched HBO’s excellent “24/7” series leading up to the NHL Winter Classic, you’ll hear guys on the ice and in interviews talking about fighting. It’s kind of laughable, but it almost seems like a gun duel out of the Wild West. Players just don’t start fighting (for the most part) as it’s almost an agreement they each have to make before dropping gloves. You’ll hear “wanna go?”, “let’s do this”, and “you wanna drop ’em?” before guys engage.
And some players realize they’re in the NHL to be the team’s enforcer. In last year’s “24/7”, a player talked about how, according to friends and folks he trusted, the best change for him to stay in the NHL is to be the teammate who will drop the mitts to protect his squad. And because of that, all his teammates respect him and have his back. While on the interview camera, his face was actually quite swollen with a blackened and bloody eye…
I’ll never forget the Steve Moore – Tood Bertuzzi fracas that ended in Bertuzzi sucker punching Moore from behind, breaking vertebrae, driving him to the ice to cause a concussion, and ending Moore’s career. It was one of the more brutal images I’ve seen in sports, but why did Bertuzzi do it?
He did it to protect one of his guys. Moore gave an elbow to the head of the then-captain of Bertuzzi’s team earlier on, and Moore had to know that wasn’t going to go without some payback. There’s more to it, mind you, but Bertuzzi is still viewed as a jerk. A couple weeks ago online there was a video of Bertuzzi with a comment section to make a remark about his moves with the puck, and I wasn’t surprised to see that many of the comments referenced the Moore incident. People don’t forget things like that. And I’m sure Bertuzzi wishes he would have confronted Moore on the ice differently…like a man of the sport.
I also remember Patrick Roy meeting opposing goalies at center ice in a team-wide brawl and seeing videos of a scuffle in Madison Square Garden in 1971 between the Maple Leafs and New York Rangers that resulted in a goalie losing his mask into the stands so that the backup, Jacques Plante, had to move between the pipes.
I’m not even going to talk about fighting and “head injuries and traumatizing blows to the head” as I am tired of that being thrown around so much in sports these days.
I’ll be back in seven days.