Mark Borowiecki retired this season, and he could look back at a great career, including a lot of heavyweight fights. Borowiecki wasn’t the guy that scored the most amount of goals, but he was a valued teammate who always stood up for his pals and those around him.
During his years in the league, Borowiecki fought some really tough guys. Name one tough guy in the NHL during the last ten years, and you could bet on Borowiecki, at some point, dropped his gloves with him. And that includes Tom Wilson.
Tom Wilson is known as one of the toughest enforcers in the league, and when Borowiecki first started playing in the NHL, he fought Wilson despite his lack of experience.
“Tom Wilson I fought a couple times when I shouldn’t have been fighting and I wasn’t really ready,” Borowiecki said on the Coming In Hot podcast (h/t RMNB). “He was like a legitimate heavy in the league and I wasn’t, so those didn’t go great.”
Borowiecki fought 113 times as a pro and fought Wilson twice when he played with the Senators. He lost both times.
“It was tough early on,” Borowiecki said. “I think I was just trying to make a name for myself. I think that’s where I went down the wrong path sometimes because I’m like ‘I’m just going to fight everyone.’ It doesn’t matter if I match up well against them. I was never really a huge guy, I was a gamer. I consider myself a middleweight.”
But when the two met again in 2021, when Borowiecki played with Nashville and Wilson in Washington, they faced again. And this time, it was different.
Wilson delivered a huge hit on Ryan Johansen, and Borowiecki felt obligated to retaliate. But the following fight was a huge disappointment. The two of them barely got a single punch in, and they both got slammed on social media for how things unfolded. But there was a reason for it.
“I’ll tell you a funny story with this one and all the HockeyFights.com people are probably going to be so mad at me for saying this,” Borowiecki said. “He had just come back from a concussion and blew up Johansen in Washington. I was getting a reputation for myself as being one of the tougher guys in the league at that point. I was like, ‘Willy, we gotta go bud.’ He was like ‘Aw, I just came back.’ I was like ‘No, sorry, dude. Like it’s time to go.’”
Wilson had just returned from a concussion and didn’t want to go. So he suggested they just tie it up.
“So we get into the corner tied up,” Borowiecki said. “We throw a couple of air muffins and then the linesmen came in, they did a great job. I actually saw people say ‘What a terrible fight. I was expecting more.’ I was like, ‘Oh if only you guys knew.’”
It was great for Borowiecki as well.
“I was like ‘All right. Sweet!’ I get Tom Wilson on my fight card and don’t get punched!’”
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