Gouging (fighting style)

Rough and Tumble or Gouging was a form of fighting in the back-country United States, primarily in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It was often characterized by the objective of gouging out an opponent's eye, and typically took place in order to settle disputes. Though gouging was common by the 1730s in southern colonies, the practice was waning by the 1840s, by which time the Bowie knife and revolver had made frontier disputes more lethal. Though it was never an organized sport, participants would sometimes schedule their fights (as one could schedule a duel), and victors were treated as local heroes. Gouging was essentially a type of duel to defend one's honor that was most common among the poor, and was especially common in southern states in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.