Everyone was talking. Players were sending texts, approaching friends, chatting up strangers, asking, Were you here? Did you see? Do you know what happened?
This is what happened.
Fields was in town for the WSOP Circuit Event. As a pro living in Los Angeles, New Orleans offered him a kind of homecoming, a chance to catch up with ‘Bama buds and reminisce about the 2013 WSOP ring he’d won here. The big PLO action was fantastic too but he’d been getting brutalized all week. His main sparring partner was Big Red, a boisterous ram-and-jam gambler whose skills involved pounding Bud Lights and getting there. One night Fields moved all-in preflop with double-suited Aces against Red’s trash—4569 unsuited, or some such garbage—for twenty grand apiece (pot, pot, pot, pot, pot, all-in, call, horse race). They ran it once, and Red scooped.
Maybe that’s what it means to be a pro: consistently get the money in good, and lose.
But that’s what you sign up for when you play PLO, isn’t it? Even if you’re all-in pre with double-suited Aces, you’re still only a 60-40 favorite against random dust. Not that Fields was dwelling on variance. Pissed and sick of losing, he couldn’t stop picturing that enormous 40k pot: a messy mound of greens, blacks, purples, and pumpkins being shipped to a chest-thumping, beer-guzzling, button-clicking buffoon. He wanted to settle the score—but how? He was more of a hotheaded smacktalker than a fighter, so he called up one of his bros, a brawny bouncer who would make a good cast member on Floribama Shore. They left the casino and rolled to Bourbon Street. They got drunk. They schemed. Fields paid Sharp to beat Red’s ass.
So now Sharp’s swaggering into the casino in a gray muscle-shirt, swole and fueled by boozy bravado, scanning the packed twenty-table cardroom for his target. There. Inside The Dungeon, the low-ceilinged back section, Red’s playing big PLO, wearing a white ballcap and a red t-shirt that’s brighter than his beard. Yelling in a harsh southern drawl, Sharp starts lobbing nonsensical insults Red’s way.
“That’s right, bitch. You smell like an octopus!”
Sitting in the 6 seat with a Bud Light and a small stack of pumpkins, Red seems more concerned about the river action than one of Fields’s goons. But Sharp won’t be ignored. He saunters closer, drink in hand, and flips Red’s hat onto the ground. It’s a middle-school bully’s move, juvenile but effective. As Red springs from his seat, nearby players exclaim whoahh, whoahh, like ranchers trying to calm a skittery bronco. Red and Sharp face off, arms length apart; Sharp is the bigger, buffer bro. A gray-suited floorman inserts himself between them like a referee, peacefully extending his arms. “Oh, you wanna stand up?” Sharp says. He’s taunting Red, goading him. “You wanna stand up?” Sensing Red’s reluctance, he keeps on. “Sit down, bitch. Sit down, bitch. That’s right, bitch.”
Red dons his ballcap and prepares to sit. But he lingers above his seat and says, maybe to show that he’s not a pushover, “Go take some steroids and suck his d*ck.” Sharp steps past the floorman and lands a lefty punch, awkwardly. Whoahh. You can tell that this is a legit beef because nobody’s saying anything aside from the guttural gasps that a stadium crowd makes. Red waits in stunned silence. For a moment everyone, including Sharp himself, is paralyzed by hesitation. Time is both speeding up and slowing down. Someone yells, “Sharp, don’t!”
Sharp swings again. His second punch is one of the most noodle-armed, weak-ass, I-don’t-wanna-be-here-but-my-buddy-paid-me punches you can imagine. Now it’s on. Red lunges with the fury of a wrestler. Sharp caroms off the cardtable to the floor and Red’s on him like a cat, pinning and pounding him on his bulbous shaved head. He grips Sharp in a full nelson and, in the motion of a kettlebell woodchop, flings Sharp off the ground into the dealer, whose arms are outstretched in an admirable display of professionalism (still holding the stub, free and clear of scattering chips). Chips are spilling, scattering. The bushy-haired player in seat 2 sits like a statue, guarding his hole cards with an attitude of supreme indifference. Red’s arms are still locked tight beneath Sharp’s armpits and his neck. Twisting his body, Red flings him away from the cardtable. Sharp’s bulbous head collides into the wall with an audible crunch and there’s another whoahh, but this one is different: it’s the soundthat movie-theater crowds make during an especially grotesque thrashing. Sharp collapses in the corner and Red pounces again, screaming, between meaty blows, “What I fuckin tell you! What I fuckin tell you!” Above their heads, gazing stoically from enframed photos on the wall, Phil Helmuth and Johnny Chan watch the action. Chan’s wearing the same expression from that scene in Rounders when he stares skeptically at Mike McD, as if to ask, Really? Is this really happening?
The floorman yells over and over, “Security is on the way.” His helpless, hopeless voice betrays the truth: Security is not on the way. Security is not on the way. Security is not on the way.
Red lifts Sharp from the ground, again in a full nelson, digging his forearms into Sharp’s neck, strangling him. He holds Sharp tight—for one second, two, three, four, five, six, seven—and then, releasing his grip, Red pushes him away and stands in breathless savage elation. Dazed and humbled, Sharp staggers out of The Dungeon and vanishes.
With the possibility of life-hobbling carnage over, a kind of agitated relief washes over the room. Players mill around, check on Red (concern, congratulations, fist-bumps), and go about the tedious business of counting and recounting chips. The bushy-haired 2-seat is still chilling. Throughout the fight—for about forty seconds—he didn’t move an inch.
Within a few days, a video of the fight appears online. Keyboard warriors everywhere weigh in. Will have a million+ views by the end of the day, Warmdeck declares. Red Beard might want to look into getting an agent and starting the UFPL (Ultimate Fighting Poker League). He could hold the inaugural belt.
Just because you are jacked does not mean you are athletic or tough and this is proof, Smoking Dough says. Those were two of the worst punches I’ve ever seen thrown by the goon. Props to red shirt for smashing that idiot.
Nice going red shirt guy, says an MMA enthusiast. Although he did miss a wide open rear-naked choke when the goon gave up his back. Definitely should have sunk in the hooks for full body control and could have even transitioned into a triangle/arm bar. Overall, 8/10. Striking and wrestling was solid but his jitz needs work.
Love the guy in seat 2 who just sits there nonchalantly and doesn’t move, betonlinesucks observes. he’s like the amberlamps of the poker world.
Really feel for the guy who lost the 40K pot, tongni says. First that, and then your best goon gets beat on tape by a poker player?
I think the video completely exonerates the guy seated at the table, Pokeraddict says. He can’t be expected to take that type of attack and he held out as long as he could have in the absence of casino security.
Well given that this is Harrah’s/Caesars, Monorail replies, the most likely outcome is that red-shirt guy gets barred for life, goon gets upgraded to 7-Star status, and the guy who recorded it gets arrested for taking unauthorized video inside the casino.
Back inside Brawler’s Paradise, the fight is a constant source of conversation. Then summer arrives, and players escape to Vegas or to vacation or into the thrill of another hand. Memory fades. But every year in May, if you’re in the cardroom during the Circuit Event, someone might point into The Dungeon and ask: Were you here? Did you see? Do you know what happened? They’ll talk about the past in the present tense, and suddenly everything about that night—Red’s bright shirt, Sharp’s oafishness, the crowd’s whoahh—appears as clearly as if it had happened yesterday. And the memories burn brighter and brighter.
