We've all seen it happen from the backyard to the TV screen. A game gets a little too heated. A rivalry goes a little too far. Boom! All a sudden you got a full scale melee. What was intended as fun has now become a fistfight, a beanball war, or something far worse. A lot of the entries on this list occurred within the field of play, but a select few made their way outside the lines. Which is worse is up to you.
One thing that we can say is that all these incidents are unanimously avoidable. You're watching a number of incidents of athletes who get caught up in the moment and commit fairly serious crimes in front of thousands (sometimes millions) of witnesses. Almost always, it gets written off as competitive people getting a little too worked up instead of, say, battery or assault.
In honor of Zinedine Zidane's 42nd birthday, here's a handful of Notable Moments of Physical Violence in Sports History (with video!) That fact that his birthday just so happens to coincide with the World Cup is a sheer (yet fortunate) coincidence.
*Note: For the record, these are only incidents that were caught on tape. If you're wondering why (blank guy from the early 1900s) isn't on here, it's because it's not on YouTube. People don't want to read descriptions of fights, they want to watch them. World Star is quietly building an empire based around that very premise.*