The study of punk in post-socialist space reveals punk today to be not a discrete cultural form contained within stylistic boundaries or social groupings but experienced and enacted as a diverse range of cultural practices. These practices are not only ‘spectacular’, style-based practices but a much broader range of everyday communicative, musical, territorial, sporting, educational, informal economy, alcohol and drug using and, in the case considered in this paper, fighting practices. Based on the ethnographic study of punk scenes in two Russian cities – St Petersburg and Vorkuta – the paper suggests that punk fighting has commonalities with that found in other subcultures (skinheads, football fans) in terms of its audience oriented and rule-governed character but that is distinctive in that most violence and fighting on punk scenes is opportunistic, chaotic and incompetent. Comparing and contrasting fighting practices on the two city scenes, moreover, demonstrates the importance of socio-cultural context and inter-group communication in shaping contemporary ‘subcultural’ practices.