Respect amongst street-fighters

In my earlier days I considered myself rather the roughneck. Real typical juvenile fearless crap machismo. I had been in my share of altercations in the street and always walked out looking good and feeling great. There was one guy who I never fought, although we always wanted to. Long story short, if had met under different circumstances we probably would have gotten along just fine, but as it was, we were enemies for years - but we never fought. Of course as years go by, tempers die, (some) maturity sets in, and all beef is squashed. I ran into him last night, and we had a good talk, and he confided to me that the main reason he wanted to fight me was because he knew I was good. He said he only wanted to fight the best fighters, and for that, even though he didn't care so much for me at the time, he respected me. I thought that was awesome. I make my friends the hard way.