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Fight Club, NLL Insider

NLL Player Poll: The Fight Club

Photo by Martin Allinson

In a heated NLL game, if some plug grabbed you, told you what he’d do to your old lady and then asked you to dance, would you have the stones to throw down?

Seriously, would you?

And don’t gimmie that crap that you’re the bigger man (or woman) and walking away makes you the true athlete, cuz you know what, that’s BS and you know it!!

So again, would you be able to do it?

Some may criticize guys for droppin’ the mitts in lacrosse, but unless you’ve actually played this sport (or other high intensity sports) at a reasonably high level, you have no idea what it takes to go toe-to-toe with some dude while 18K plus are screaming at you for blood.

Do you seriously think that’s easy? READ MORE »

Fight Club

Fight Club Ranking

I was thinking about that last Fight Club post we had like a month back.

I gotta say, it really bothered me. I couldn’t believe I stooped to such low levels with it.

Lacrosse is so much more than just watching the big boys drop the mitts all night long.

I felt like a real savage. Barbaric even. I think I really dumbed down the sport that day. Sorry guys. My bad.

Where do I get off ranking ten guys when it comes to fighting in our game? Seriously!! Is this amateur hour (don’t answer that)?

So after sleeping on it a bit and wondering what I could do to redeem myself, there really was only one thing I could do… TWO SEPARATE RANKINGS for the heavies and the lightweights!! It was about as obvious as the mountain of snow that poured down on us in TO yesterday.

Two rankings, duh!!! What the hell was I thinking mashing all those names into one rundown?? Stupid.

READ MORE »

Fight Club

Geoff Snider’s Top Fights

I just watched eight Geoff Snider fights online and, wow, he’s a really tough guy. It’s no wonder the Wings want him around this season. Still, some of them, either for the matchup or the punches landed, were better than others. Here are the top Geoff Snider fights:

1. This is the fight where Snider clearly looks angriest. With the Wings having given up the game-winning goal in Buffalo with fewer than 15 seconds remaining, Snider squares up with the Bandits’ Pat McCready, who didn’t want to take his helmet off.

Fast forward to 2:10 to see the action.

2. This is a really long and entertaining fight that is fairly evenly matched, but Snider definitely got the best of his competition.

3. This is the most vicious fight, Snider really tosses this guy around but he gets some good punches in.

4. This fight is really short. Snider basically just rocks this guy in four punches.

The other nominees are here, here, here and here.

Fight Club, Inside Lacrosse Classics

Another Take on Fighting

From time to time at NLLInsider.com we’ll drop an old-school Inside Lacrosse Magazine piece on you. Why? Well, because we can. Because we think some of the stuff we’ve done over the years is pretty good. And because we think it’s still interesting to read.

We’ll probably never go older than this piece. I wrote this story in the fall of 2001. To add to the old-school flavor, I even uploaded this classic pic of Tom Ryan about to take on Shawn Williams, who, because of the angle, looks like he might be shorter than me. This literally looks like Sasquatch vs. a Smurf.

What amazed me when I wrote this was how divided the NLL community was on the topic of fighting. It was either a critical part of the keeping players honest, or an evil, ugly element that could destroy lacrosse.

I would have written an update to this subject but I think my man Geoff Snider did a great job covering the topic on his first blog yesterday.

For the record, I think fighting has a place in the NLL. I can see exactly where these guys come from when they talk about policing a game and protecting their players. As long as these fights remain isolated and under control, they remain a necessary part of the game.

What do you think? Go to Wingszone.com to throw down.

Fight Club

NLL Fight Club: Top 10 Fighters

Quick history lesson before I breakdown this first (re) installment of The Fight Club rankings.

The Fight Club is actually something that myself and Shaydon Santos, current captain of the San Jose Stealth, first dropped like a good six years back that ended up taking on a life of its own.

Like a helluva lotta people in the game, we loved it when the guys went buckets and dropped their mitts. Shaydon started it up by posting a ton of fight vids from different decades, from different levels of the game and just had a crazy amount of people flooding the old RBL site. We had some insane stuff up there. Obviously the old Wings/Turbos massacre was on there, but we also had some wicked old school scraps from Mann Cup series that had guys like Darris Kilgour and Kevin Dance dropping dudes on their heads and then punking their lunch money off them too. It was killer stuff. READ MORE »

Fight Club, NLL Insider

Fighting in the NLL: Calculated and misunderstood

You don’t need to have too many conversations to understand that the feelings on fighting in lacrosse, or in any sport for that matter, are mixed. Fighting is truly a finer point of the sport that is misunderstood by many, applauded by the faithful, and incredibly respected by the few who willingly participate. I’m pretty sure that everyone who knows me also knows where I stand on the issue. So, for all of you out there who can’t seem to fathom how two athletes can step back, drop their gloves, go toe to toe, and buy each other a beer after the game, here is your explanation.

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