News

When We Were Bouncers: Tait Fletcher

“So the kid springs back up and he thinks that we only just got to the parking lot. ‘We gonna do something or what?!’ And so I armdrag him and put him out again.”

Chris Palmquist

May 27, 2014 · 6 min read

Earn XP for every story you read

Actor/stuntman/fighter Paul “The Mauler” Lazenby has a must-read Facebook page – When We Were Bouncers. Each week he presents a crazy new story from former security personnel who went on to become actors, comedians, pro wrestlers, stuntmen, or MMA fighters.

This week Lazenby profiles celebrity bodyguard, TUF veteran, Breaking Bad star, stuntman, and co-owner of the Caveman Coffee Co. Fletcher. takes us on a trip back to his days of running the door at New Mexico’s Paramount Club.

When I show up I’m in a crabby mood because I’ve got an MMA fight coming up in a week, and I’m cutting weight so I’m hungry and skinny and miserable. Then this young dude in a Porsche pulls into a handicapped spot out front and starts revving his engine like an asshole. He thinks he’s in a Chevelle or something, but instead of making a deep rumble and roar, his engine’s just making this whiny, irritating noise while he yells out the window, THAT’S RIGHT, MOTHERFUCKER! THAT’S RIGHT! I don’t know who he thought he was impressing because there was nobody around, just us standing inside the door.

Of course, I’m immediately thinking that this is not a guy I want in the bar.

The kid gets out of his car and walks up — he’s a big kid — and I go, Hey, homie — you can’t park there. You’ll get towed.

Fuck that, I can park where I want.

No, dude, that’s a handicapped spot, you’ll get towed. In fact… you know what, dude? You should just bounce. Tonight’s not your night — come back and see us another time.

That pisses him off. Oh yeah? What are you, some kind of asskicker? You just going around kicking ass all day, is that it?

And I’m thinking, Yes, that’s exactly it. Every single day, twice a day for the last six weeks, kicking ass is exactly what I’ve been doing.

Then he takes a couple steps back, hawks up a big one, spits it right on my legs and challenges me. C’mon, motherfucker! C’mon across the street, motherfucker!

Now, I always preached to my guys about never leaving the door, about always taking the high road and staying safe… but this was the one time that I was gonna go against that. I look at the kid and say, Okay, let’s go. Across the street in that dark parking lot over there. But he doesn’t like the sound of that, even though ‘across the street’ was his idea in the first place. He wants to do it right there on the sidewalk, but I tell him, I can’t have this in front of the club. I can’t have people seeing what I’m gonna do to you.

And now he’s really backpedaling, saying, Fuck it, I’m just gonna leave. So I tell him he’s a punk motherfucker and turn around to walk inside, but as soon as I do he gets brave and starts talking shit again. So I grab him by the back of the neck and drag him across the street to the parking lot and say, What now, dude?

Fuck you, man! You don’t know who my family is! He starts claiming his family is Italian mafia, that the Mexican mafia work for them, and all kinds of other shit. He tells me his name and I kind of recognize it, I think that his family might actually be running some shit through New Mexico. But at this point I don’t care.

I don’t have any patience for displays like this. I’m the kind of guy who, if you pull a gun on me, you’re gonna have to pull the trigger. I’m not gonna have some tough guy wave a gun in my face and think he’s gonna get a result. The result is that I’m gonna take the gun away and beat you with it. Or you’re gonna shoot me, we’ve got choices. (laughs)

So I tell the kid, All that’s gonna happen is I’m just gonna put you to sleep. I’m not even gonna hurt you, I’m just gonna put you to sleep. That gets him threatening to kill my family, kill my mom, stuff like that — and that’s it. I walk forward with my head right out there, begging to be punched, and when he takes a swing at it I duck, get his back, squeeze him out and drop him.

The problem with putting somebody out, though, is that it’s like tasering somebody. [When they wake up] they’re back at 100%, and they don’t even know what just happened. So the kid springs back up and he thinks that we only just got to the parking lot. We gonna do something or what?! (laughs) And so I armdrag him and put him out again.

This happens SIX TIMES, by which time we’ve worked our way back to the sidewalk. As the kid’s slumping to the ground for the last time, Corey, my guy at the club door, comes across the street with a pair of handcuffs. We all kept a pair of cuffs on us because in New Mexico you can legally use them to citizen-arrest people.

Every previous time he woke up the kid was all piss-and-vinegar, breathing fire and talking about killing everyone. But when he wakes up now and feels those handcuffs on his wrists, it’s like, WHOA. Now he’s stone-cold sober. I’m sorry, dude, I was just fucking around. Complete change of personality — he even starts crying a little bit when I tell him that the cops are on the way.

One of the cops who shows up is a guy I train jiu-jitsu with, and he comes over, shines his light on the kid’s face and says, Tait, what did you do to this kid? He’s got no eyebrows. Now, that’s a detail that you’re not necessarily going to to notice when you’re getting ready to fight, but I check it now and sure enough, no eyebrows. Beats me how the kid got like that — I don’t know if he got messed up, watched Pink Floyd: The Wall and shaved ‘em off or what, but they are totally gone. And then the kid tries to pin that on me — he tells the cop that I scraped them off on the sidewalk! (laughs)

The kid was a clown but it turned out that his family really was legit connected, so a couple of people went and talked to them on my behalf, made it clear that it was better to just drop the whole thing. Which, thankfully, they did.