Dan Campbell 'fired up' over fight at Lions practice between Amon-Ra St. Brown and Ifeatu Melifonwu
The Lions coach enjoyed the two rookies butting heads

Joe Judge may not have been happy New York Giants players fought during training camp practice. Dan Campbell, a former Giants tight end, embraces it with the Detroit Lions.
Detroit rookies Amon-Ra St. Brown and Ifeatu Melifonwu threw a few punches during the Lions' first padded training camp practice. Campbell was all in favor of two rookies in a heated competition trying to prove themselves.
"I was fired up," Campbell said, via Kyle Meinke of MLive.com. "Because they were competing, man. It was good to see both of them, two young bucks, go after it. They were, uh -- look, we had a pretty good idea of Amon-Ra, you know? The Sun God? What he's capable of? His aggressiveness shows up -- it would show up on tape -- in college.
"Look, this guy will mix it up. And there's things you see with Iffy in school, but I didn't quite know. And to know he's got, 'Hey man, I'm not your punching bag.' That encouraged me, it really did."
Campbell encouraging his players to stand up for themselves shouldn't be a surprise. Prior to the first day of Lions' padded practice Tuesday, he shared a story from his rookie year at Giants training camp. Giants tight end Howard Cross told Campbell to have his back if anything went down -- and a fight broke out on the first play of practice.
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Safe to say Campbell is a fan of players getting in the heat of the moment. This wasn't an all-out brawl like in New York -- just two guys butting heads.
"Look, they know what we don't want," Campbell said. "It doesn't mean we're not going to have a couple of heated battles in there, but to me, where you end up having a problem is when you start having all-out brawls all practice long, and it's like, 'Oh my God, here we go. We got a 10-minute period, and eight minutes of it is fighting amongst the team?' It's counterproductive, and you got to do something about it because you're not getting work done.
"Those little things. I just think they make you practice better, I think they make you practice harder. You don't want to lose to that guy. You're p---ed off."