I remember nights like this when I used to manage a club. We had a mix of college kids and town regulars that would clash on many an occasion, lots of oilfield workers(rig pigs), hockey teams from the neighboring towns and tree planters that would always find some one to fight.(The club was called Twister, but was renamed "Fisters" before I started running it). Every now and then we'd have a big scrum like the one you described. The most memorable being a seismic crew that waltzed in and started all sorts of trouble. I only had a staff of 3 doormen, myself, and 1 bartender who would get involved in these situations Anyways, I basically save this one jacka$$ from the seismic crew from getting a beating and he rewards me with swinging a bottle at my head! My bartender caught his hand before he smashed me in the pumpkin, and I proceeded to ground and pound this (I don't want to use the term ...man) and actually had patrons pull me off screaming " Jed, Jed, you're gonna get fired!!" One of the only times I actually hit a patron. The cops would always take their sweet time to get to these brawls, so I instructed the waitresses to tell the dispatcher that weapons were involved to get them to respond faster.