Every fifteen or twenty minutes there was a rush to some part, to witness a fisticuff.1852, Eli Bowen et al., The Pictorial Sketch-book of Pennsylvania:
This clearly was not a case for fisticuffs, even apart from the very natural aversion I had to beat that Shadow—this wandering and tormented thing.1902, Joseph Conrad, “Heart of Darkness”, in Youth: A Narrative: And Two Other Stories, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and sons, →OCLC, part III, pages 161–162:
2
Obsolete A cuff or blow administered with the fist.
The apprenticeship of the Prussian Crown Princes has always consisted in receiving fisticuffs and cowhidings from their progenitor, the king.2021, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse:
fisticuff
verb
Etymology From fist + cuff (“blow with the hand”). Modern uses as a verb are a back-formation on the plural uses of the noun.
Generously scattering a drop of my fortune on an early morning sea breeze. Should have jumped after it. Grabber at life's banquet follows a fortune to doom. As folk fleece and fisticuff in street.1963, J P Donleavy, A Singular Man, published 1963 (USA), page 265: