When he returns home and finds Becky crying, he must choose between defending her honor or upholding his father's plea to "walk away from trouble when he can."

But to their surprise, Tommy locks the door, then fights all three Gatlin boys (unleashing "twenty years of crawling" that "was bottled up inside him"), knocking each to the floor and saying "this one's for Becky" as the last one goes down.

[2] However, in The Billboard Book of Number One Country Singles, Rogers stated that he was unaware of the connection and that he would have otherwise asked for the name to be changed.

[2] Gatlin later claimed in an interview on The Adam Carolla Show that the song’s cowriter Roger Bowling held a personal grudge against him for unknown reasons.

"[4] In a 2013 interview with the song's co-writer, Billy Edd Wheeler suggested that the beef between Bowling and Gatlin arose during a visit to the office of Kenny's producer Larry Butler.

The film stars Rogers as Tommy's uncle Reverend Matthew Spencer (who sang the song in the film), and features Fredric Lehne as Tommy Spencer, Largo Woodruff as Becky and William Schreiner as James Joseph "Jimmy Joe" Gatlin, the lead bully of the Gatlin family clan.

Set in small-town Georgia during the onset of America's involvement in World War II, the film's plot expands on the story in the song.