Fight Club

Two teenagers wearing boxing gloves duke it out during round two of a bout in a Meadowlake parking lot. About 30 school age children were hanging out watching the fight.

Looking for wild art as we call it in the business or a standalone or a feature (strong human interest photo), I drive a lot of miles through public areas including local parks. One spring day I noticed several vehicles pulling into a community park not far behind me.

As I did a loop inside the park I noticed a good number of teenagers scurrying to get out of their cars as I slowed way down to see what they were up to. A bunch of them started to light up and some were smoking from a crack pipe. Quite surprising to me as this was in broad daylight and in a town with strong Christian values located in the bible belt.

Then a circle started to form as I got out of my car to take photos. I realized then there was a fight, but not a regular street fight, but a boxing match between two young men. The whole thing seemed surreal as I got closer to take a few pics of these two going at it as it was like a fight club.

When I got back to the newspaper our two editors couldn’t believe what they were seeing on my computer monitor. The photo which never ran was suppose to be held for a story about a continuing problem of alcohol and substance abuse with teens all while getting caught up in various crimes. The whole thing was swept under the rug unfortunately.