Some people around here will have heard of my single fight at an independent school, which suffered from systematic bullying. The usual story goes like this.
I decided to fight back. I kneed him in the balls and nutted him in the face. He fell over backwards, cracked his head on a kerb and was sent to hospital to check for concussion. A win. Fighting dirty is okay.
I got a revenge attack later, which I don't usually talk about. That involved broken spectacles, a black eye and a burst lip.
The result of all this is a bit more positive. Guys bigger and less weedy than me also clocked that it was okay to fight back against their own bullies, and applied it with some vigour.
This made the school culture horribly pugilistic, but it did cause the staff to realise that bullying was an actual problem, and do something about it. It got stamped on hard, with a result. It ended.
However this improved the school, with my own fight being part of the the start, it didn't really happen the way I described. which is where your articles come in.
I made minimal contact with his balls, and had just enough of a reaction to put my head in the way of his face when it was coming down (he was quite a bit taller than me). The third part is true, he was indeed sent to hospital to check for concussion. I did get a severe telling off form the headmaster, amounting to "I said stand up to bullies, not hospitalise them". An accidental win, pure and simple.
I do wonder how many fights are decided by such accidental reactions. I'd make fair guess that its quite a lot of them.
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