The biggest fight I've ever been involved in

[elbows_and_knees]

Long story short, over the weekend A fight broke out at my club invloving over 20 people, not including the bouncers. It started as a fight between two people that I rushed to break up because I KNEW it was gonna get out of hand - there were large groups of people from opposing sides of the city and the ones fighting were each from one of the sides. I grabbed the guy who threw the first punch and put him in an RNC. As I was dragging him out, one of his buddied comes behind me and starts punching me in the back of the head. It didn't hurt, so I kept with the choke, till the guy was unconscious. One of the other bouncers handled the guy that was behind me. After that, all he11 broke loose. Everyone jumped in and all of the other bouncers (7 of us total) were trying to keep everything under control, dropping any aggressor we came in contact with. Finally, a group of cops rushed in and started helping us take people out, arresting several of them.

[Northren Ogre]

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.

[Sohan]

Yikes. Tough night.

Teaching cute wealthy housewives to do butt blasters is a lot more fun.

Respectfully,

Sohan

[Menjo]

Wow, thanks for sharing that story. Interesting.

Do you get anything extra for doing a good job in big situations like that? Or is that expected anyway?

[ShotokanKid]

ditto

I take it you didn't get hurt at all?

Just out of curiousity, how did you get to be a bouncer?

[UseoForce]

elbows, would you say you learned anything in particular from this experience?

[elbows_and_knees]

Yikes. Tough night.

Teaching cute wealthy housewives to do butt blasters is a lot more fun.

Respectfully,

Sohan

LOL!!! How do I get into that line of work?

[elbows_and_knees]

ditto

I take it you didn't get hurt at all?

Just out of curiousity, how did you get to be a bouncer?

I jarred my knee a tad. I went to hit someone, and he musta had a guardian angel - as soon as I planted my foot and started the punch, I slipped in a puddle (water or alcohol or something) and my knee went one way, whereas my body went the other. I can run, jump, squat, etc. But to this day ( a week later) it hurts to extend my leg although I can do it now.

since I slipped, the punch was screwed and I ended running into the guy and applying a choke from the front.

I got the job through a student of mine. He's a bartender at the bar across the street and one day I told him I was gonna start looking for a second job. He went and talked to the head of security where I work now, and they told him to have me come in and "interview". they hired me on the spot.

[elbows_and_knees]

Wow, thanks for sharing that story. Interesting.

Do you get anything extra for doing a good job in big situations like that? Or is that expected anyway?

Nah, no extra pay. breaking up fights is just part of the job. Last night we broke up several fights and also stopped a guy in the middle of a dope deal. when we searched him, he had a knife on his person. Last friday, one of us got stabbed in the leg... it's all par for the course.

[elbows_and_knees]

elbows, would you say you learned anything in particular from this experience?

yeah - that they shouldn't allow alcohol on the dance floor.

tactically, I'm not really sure. one thing would be to approach the situation with more caution. I KNEW something was about to happen, but when I went to the scene, I rushed straight to the guy fighting instead of thinking about his buddies. The problem with thinking though is that the longer I think, the longer the situation goes on. I'm not too concerned with weapons (metal detectors, and we make sure we constantly throw stray bottles away) and generally assume that I can handle three people (untrained and hopefully intoxicated). So, between the seven bouncers on the floor, if we can each take 3, then we take 21 guys - about the number that was involved. We handled it all, so I'm thinking it was a decent assumption, even though we had to take up slack for one bouncer who was getting tooled around.

Now, I learned plenty the night before that when my buddy got stabbed.