In the movie "Dazed and Confused" one character, Mike, describes his theory of the perfect fight.
Mike: "Look man I've got it all planed out. Most fights at places like this never get past a punch or two before they're broken up you know. There's almost this natural instinct not to upset the herd. All I've got to do is get in one good punch, play the offense and wait."
The Mike character follows through on his plan after his nemesis drops the classic line, "I only came here to do two things, kick some ass and drink some beer." [glances over his shoulder] "Looks like we're almost outta beer."
The plan is an utter failure as the other kid beats Mike to a pulp after Mike's pre-emptive strike. No one comes to rescue him.
Upon seeing this movie, I was no stranger to this scenario as a friend of mine, Ron, had planned to do the very same scheme in high school. It ended up working out for him, in a way.
Ron called out this kid, politely known as "Giant Jason," when he was walking somewhere in the middle of the quad. Giant Jason was way bigger but he wasn't a real hot head so he just kind of stood there and took Ron's abuse, while a crowd (including your's truly) developed around the two.
Giant Jason finally decided that he'd had enough of this abuse and that he would just punch Ron and let the natural order of high school's casual violence take over. Giant Jason began to take off his backpack so he could fight properly, but the backpack's zipper was kind of undone so all of his books suddenly fell out the backpack. Ron looked at him with disdain and said, "What are you going to do? Study me to death?" The growing crowd of kids all burst into laughter at Ron's cleverness and Giant Jason's oafishness. Giant Jason rushed towards Ron only to be apprehended by two security guards who had run into the crowd of teenage voyeurs. Ron stood there smiling, untrammeled by our high school's security guards. He had delivered the perfect quip (that spread around school like wildfire) without suffering any repercussions.
If I'm not mistaken Ron and I cut class the next day. Just in case Giant Jason was still angry.
