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.

[3][failed verification] When a dispute arose, fighters could either agree to fight "fair", meaning according to Broughton rules, or "rough and tumble".

Amid the general mayhem, however, gouging out an opponent's eye became the sine qua non of rough-and-tumble fighting, much like the knockout punch in modern boxing.

Leadership quickly passed from the southern seaboard to upcountry counties and the western frontier ... the settlers of western Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee, as well as upland Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, became especially known for their pugnacity.Though legend sometimes amplifies the brutality of these fights, Gorn emphasizes the historical reality of these events: Foreign travelers might exaggerate and backwoods storytellers embellish, but the most neglected fact about eye-gouging matches is their actuality.An act passed by the Virginia Assembly in 1752 begins by remarking that "many mischievous and ill disposed persons have of late, in a malicious and barbarous manner, maimed, wounded, and defaced, many of his majesty's subjects", then very specifically makes it a felony to "put out an eye, slit the nose, bite or cut off a nose, or lip", among other offenses.

"[6] Court cases and legal rulings in Tennessee, South Carolina, and Arkansas provide ample evidence of the history of this type of fighting.