Tango had agreed to back “the stupid brother of this cute girl I was seeing” in a fight outside a notorious dive. Both parties grabbed what was at hand, leaving Tango with a rubber hose with a hard knob on the end. After the primary enemy, a large muscular man with a steel bar, disabled the brother and Tango’s cute girl was neutralized by an enemy female, he was left to face the big man with the steel bar.

Trying to talk his way out of the fight, Tango agreed to drop the hose, only to have the big man go for his head with a diagonal down-stroke. Tango employed his bat grab, suffering a fracture of the radial bone, and found himself unable to twist the bar free of the big man’s hands. They grappled and talked until Tango convinced the big man that he had just been there to make sure the girl’s brother had not been ganged up on. They agreed to a truce, and Tango collected his wounded and cleared out.

Based on many of the incidents that I documented, but did not make it into the sample of stories above, many of the clubbers actually injured people more seriously than they had intended. Irene’s brother and Joey are examples from this sample. It seems that the high level of energy used to employ these weapons deadens the wielder’s appreciation of the damage he has inflicted. The length of bats at least, did seem to make disarms more attainable by the defender then against smaller weapons, although this is often complicated by the presence of accomplices assisting the batter, or wielding bats of their own. The best thing to remember is that the clubber is, more often than the users of most other types of weapons, acting as a member of a violently aggressive group.