Training ground fights? Yeah, I’ve seen a few

I never know exactly how to feel about training ground fights.

It’s not exactly every day where they’re swingin’ the corner flags and brawlin’ in the center circle. But it’s not exactly rare, either.

So when players do go all MMA, and when the pugilists are outed publicly, the story tends to clang the loud bell of “drama” and “sensational.”  It’s hard to write about a fight without making it seem important.  Because, generally, when two well-muscled, fit professional athletes go to pummeling each other, it is kind of important. Or it can be, at least.

On the other hand, when contact sports and competitive people get together, with gigantic egos as an active-ingredient accelerant, the occasional flash fire can come and go with no long-term charring.

So we get to a training ground bust-up between Seattle’s Fredy Montero and Eddie Johnson that may or may not have happened last spring.

Joshua Mayers of the The Seattle Times has the “deets.” (And manager Sigi Schmid spent a lot of time talking about these things – without ever really saying whether it did or it didn’t. Happen, that is.)

They’re probably not the only ones who had a punchup at practice,” Schmid said. “I’ve rarely had a team where that didn’t happen. When we won the MLS Cup in 2002 with the Galaxy, I think Danny Califf almost knocked out one of our guys about a week before the playoffs, and we still won a championship.”