Tim Walker’s Sucker-punch

Increasingly the New Zealand public are being exposed to footage of idiot males punching other males in the head.

The aspect of ‘punching another person in the head’ that most people – particularly drunken males – seem to overlook, is that the damage inflicted by the initial fist/face contact is generally only a portion of the resulting destruction.

The most common forum for the aforementioned barbarism is Auckland streets; the most common time, after dark.

Perhaps ironically the very people put in place to protect nighttime streets and the nightclubs to which they lead – the bouncers themselves – are by all accounts the worst offenders; a point to which, having experienced these goings-on first hand, I can attest wholeheartedly.

Recent incidents include CCTV footage from across the past few weeks showing a number of seemingly bored doormen, having become engaged in conversation with a drunken reveller or two, who then, with no notable provocation, throw a close-quarters sucker-punch, knocking the partygoer over backwards.

To a casual observer, unjustified brutality as this may have been, the above incident is just what happens on Auckland streets late at night…

What that uninterested observer wouldn’t have seen as – aided by alcohol the victim of the attack topples over backwards where his inhibited reflexes mean no limbs magically appear to cushion his fall and thus – the fallen man’s skull cracks into the cold pavement below where if he wasn’t unconscious before the hit he sure is now, is the way the fallen man’s brain collides with the inside of his jagged skull causing at best, mild concussion; at worst, an unnoticed brain bleed which, if untreated, will inevitably result in that man’s death.

…But why is it ‘just what happens’?

Are we such a primitive breed of people, are our frontal lobes so impossibly underdeveloped, that we lack the ability as rational human beings to reason with one another – to settle disputes without succumbing to the deluge of testosterone raging through our big burly man-bodies?

What is interesting is that this question has been asked in the form of an impassioned plea, by the mothers, the fathers, the siblings and cherished friends, of the multitude of young Kiwis who have been knocked over backwards at the hand of a thoughtless sucker-punch.

The media used to refer to them as ‘king-hits’ but they’re not; there is nothing regal about a sucker-punch.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Rash Nilty

Photography by Loch Thair-Rove

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *