Fighting isn’t as much a part of the NHL as it used to be, but its key participants and specific fights will forever stay ingrained in the minds of many fans. For years, fighting was a big part of the game. In today’s league, it is a rare occasion to see two bruisers go toe-to-toe in a real hockey fight. Sure, there are still some big guys in the league who can throw down with anyone. However, there are very few true fighters like there have been in past years.
One such figure is Tony Twist, a Canadian former professional ice hockey player who made his mark as a feared enforcer in the NHL. This article delves into his career, his role in hockey fights, and other aspects of his life both on and off the ice.
Tony Twist's Hockey Career
Anthony "Tony" Rory Twist (born May 9, 1968) played left wing in the NHL for the St. Louis Blues and Quebec Nordiques between 1989 and 1999. Twist was selected by the St. Louis Blues in the ninth round of the 1988 NHL Entry Draft, No. 177 overall. After skating with the Blues for the 1989-1990 season, he played four seasons with the Quebec Nordiques (later relocated to Colorado). Twist became a free agent in 1994 and returned to the Blues, playing there until July 1999, when he broke his pelvis in a motorcycle accident in St.
Twist never saw much ice time, playing just 445 games, but he still managed to put up six 10-fight seasons, including a career-high 15 fights during the 1992-93 season. He intimidated everyone in the league, including other enforcers that knew the damage he could do. His NHL career ended when he broke his pelvis in a motorcycle accident.
Key Highlights:
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- Drafted: 177th overall by the St. Louis Blues in 1988.
- Teams: St. Louis Blues, Quebec Nordiques.
- Notable: Known for his enforcer role and fighting ability.
The Role of Fighting in Hockey
Fighting isn’t as much a part of the NHL as it used to be, but its key participants and specific fights will forever stay ingrained in the minds of many fans. For years, fighting was a big part of the game. In today’s league, it is a rare occasion to see two bruisers go toe-to-toe in a real hockey fight. Sure, there are still some big guys in the league who can throw down with anyone. However, there are very few true fighters like there have been in past years.
To put it simply, hockey is the only sport where the players are allowed to police what goes on. Typically it’s to set the tone or send a message. Another common occurrence is the protection of star players.
The Infamous Fight: Tony Twist vs. Rob Ray
On November 27, 1995, at the Kiel Center in St Louis, Missouri, Tony Twist and Rob Ray had a fight. 'Twister' (Penalties In Minutes: 1121 in 10 National Hockey League seasons) of the St Louis Blues dropped the gloves against 'Razor' (PIMs: 3207 over 15 NHL seasons) of the Buffalo Sabres in what our friends on Youtube describe as one of the best hockey fights ever. Like most hockey fights, the action seems to be over in a couple of sneezes, but this didn't stop the home enforcer fracturing the visiting tough guy's orbital bone with a flurry of devastating haymakers.
The remarkable thing here isn't the fight itself - although as a circle of destruction, it's remarkable enough - but what happened after, which neither the television cameras nor the fans in the arena could be expected to see. Twist and Ray had words, although not of the sort where Razor asked Twister what the hell he thought he was doing because he could have killed him. Instead, the pair shared a joke.
With a fractured eye socket and a headache that surely bordered on a concussion, the Sabre asked the Blue if he could take part in the home player's annual charity motorcycle ride. Twist laughed and said "not a chance". Looking at Ray's face, which according to Twister "was just a mess", the victor then responded to his opponent's questions regarding the damage inflicted by trying not to laugh and saying, "buddy, I think you're going to have to get to hospital pretty quick for [this] one." Razor just smiled. Why? Because it wasn't personal, it was business. Now where the hell is that ambulance?
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This week's column isn't about whether the NHL should outlaw fighting. We've done that, and to a man (and occasionally a woman) each one of you disagreed with my belief that it should. But, like Rob 'Razor' Ray, Ian 'Wimp' Winwood knows when he's beaten. No, this time I'm going to write about the enforcers themselves, them and the dark arts of their physical and (just as importantly) psychological trade. What do you do for a living? Me? Oh, I beat other men up with my bare fists while an arena filled with people cheer me on. Isn't that something?
The Code: Unwritten Rules of Fighting
Reading Ross Bernstein's fascinating if often hysterically badly written book The Code: The Unwritten Rules Of Fighting And Retaliation In The NHL, I was hugely surprised to learn that most hockey enforcers did not, as teenagers, dream of themselves performing this role. I don't know why, because when he played for the Toronto Maple Leafs, Tie Domi, 'the bowling ball with teeth', sold more replica jerseys than superstar Mats Sundin. But as kids the tough guys imagined themselves as the people they now protect - the scorers. They were Brett Hull, 'The Golden Brett', logging 22 minutes of ice time in game seven of the Stanley Cup Finals. And, of course, they pictured themselves scoring the winning goal.
As an outsider, it seems to me that as a sport hockey actually resembles a cult. In Canada at least, at 15 years old the most promising players of this largely rural nation will leave home to play junior hockey, potentially just one step away from the NHL. Unlike their American counterparts, in doing this they do not gain the benefit of a college education, so hockey is all that they have. Billeted with families in distant cities, these players may quickly come to understand that they are no longer the best players on the ice. So they adapt, or else they fail. For players of junior hockey, just like the folks at Nasa, failure is not an option; all they ever dreamt of is the NHL. There is no Plan B.
Fortunately for them, hockey is a game that offers many different jobs. Discounting even the positional roles, there is space, and need, for superstars, for a grinder, an agitator, an enforcer. And if a player can't score the goals himself, well, then he'll learn to fight in order that others can.
This is called 'The Code', and it is to this code that Bernstein's book refers. This too is learned in junior hockey, away from parents and away from home. It is unwritten and, apparently, goes without saying, but every player understands its nuances, which are these: that no act on the ice shall go unchallenged, that accountability and respect are all, and that they will be found somewhere.
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If liberties are taken with a star player then the enforcer will challenge his counterpart to a duel, thus righting the wrong. If the opposing enforcer refuses to fight (which he may do, for tactical reasons) then retribution will climb higher up the hockey food chain. Enforcers understand they live at the bottom of this food chain, and if they have to go to the top, to the superstar, in order to right a wrong, then they will do so. It is here, in this climb for justice, that events in hockey can spiral horribly out of control.
They believe it to be about respect, and this is a word that crops up again and again and again. In the cult of hockey it is not a question of whether it's respectful to beat another man with your bare fists, so don't even bother asking it. 'Showing up' is the phrase, which means showing up to fight. It doesn't even really matter if the enforcer, or any player for that matter, loses the fight, just so long as he 'shows up'. Because if he doesn't then he loses the respect of his teammates. And respect is everything.
This is the enforcer's unwritten contract of employment. The coach will tap him on the shoulder, perhaps in the third period (which might well be his first shift of the night) and out he will go to fight. It is a lonely and perilous position. His knuckles may be broken from smashing his fists on to another fighter's 'brain bucket' (helmet) the previous night, but still he has to fight. The bones in his own face may be broken, but still he has to fight. If he has fresh stitches then the other fighter will try to break them open, but - yep - he still has to fight. If he doesn't, or if he can't, then he's of no use to the team. And if he's no use to the team then it might just be that he has no use as a person.
The next time I see a hockey fight I'm going to try and think about the men throwing the punches rather than the punches they're throwing. I'm going to try and think of Stu 'The Grim Reaper' Grimson (PIMs: 2113 over 18 NHL seasons), who answered the question of how as a born-again Christian he reconciled his pugilism with his religious convictions with the words, "The Lord knows that I'm just doing my job." I'm going to try not to think, "Well bloody hell, you could say that about any job - you could be a slave trader and say that." Instead I'm going to think about the man being led by the zebras (referees) to the penalty box and wonder what he thinks of when he looks at his scarred and hurting hands during the long dark nights of the soul.
Perhaps he thinks of nothing.
Beyond the Ice: Twist's Life Off the Rink
Twist penned a foreword to the Ross Bernstein book The Code: The Unwritten Rules Of Fighting And Retaliation In The NHL. He also owned a chain of bars named Twister's Iron Bar Saloon, with locations in St. Charles and Imperial Missouri. Twist was co-host of the Smash and Twist show on 590 the Fan in St. Louis.
In the Spawn comic book series, Todd McFarlane created a mob enforcer character named Antonio "Tony Twist" Twistelli, whom McFarlane acknowledged was named after Tony Twist. Twist learned about the character through his mother in British Columbia, who had a group of boys arrive to her house with Tony Twist-related Spawn items in 1997. After this incident, Twist viewed the Spawn animated series that had earlier aired on HBO from May to June 1997, he subsequently remarked "I'm in pink thong underwear, smoking a cigar, ordering the kidnapping of a child while two women are naked on the couch making love to each other. I obviously didn't want any part of that. Even if I was a good guy I wouldn’t have participated. You’ve got kids being kidnapped, you’ve got nudity, you’ve got police raping women.
He was initially awarded $24.5 million by a St. Louis, Missouri judge in 2000. Sean Phillips, a former executive of a sports nutrition company, testified for Twist, stating that he withdrew a $100,000 endorsement deal, only after learning about the despicable nature of the Tony Twist character. However, the $24.5 million ruling would be reversed in November 2000, with McFarlane joking to journalists "He's got to return that yacht now." The trial continued, and Twist later won $15 million in 2004 when a St. Twist reflected on the lawsuit in a 2020 interview, saying "I did not despise Todd in any way shape or form. Not at all.