Some called Anwar Price a “hero” for his role attempting to break up a violent riverfront brawl in Alabama’s capital city last weekend.

When he was in the thick of the scrum, though, people called him “Michigan.”

Price, a 42-year-old Montgomery resident, was born and raised in Saginaw County, Michigan’s Buena Vista Township, about 100 miles north of Detroit.

An Alabama resident since 2001, he said his roots and love for his home state were why he wore a University of Michigan-themed Nike shirt Saturday when viral video footage captured his efforts to squash the brawl in Montgomery.

Some of the people whose tempers he attempted to cool recognized the university logo on his shirt, earning him his nickname at the scene.

Police on Monday said arrest warrants were issued in connection with the brawl.

By then, the mass fight went viral, with traditional and social media sharing video of a group pummeling a riverboat co-captain who attempted to get a pontoon moved along a Montgomery dock.

That footage showed Price — wearing the Nike shirt, white shorts and white-framed shades propped above his forehead — among the first people attempting the squash the violence. He never threw a punch or received one.

He said his energy instead was spent separating people in the thick of things.

“I actually have been involved in altercations like that, where I made the wrong choice,” Price said.

“It might look cool on Facebook — you might get some ‘likes’ for being violent in that kind of situation — but, when the dust settles, it’s going to be you and the consequences that you have to live with. We want to teach our kids to do the right thing.”

Price said he was with his 14-year-old daughter, watching a back-to-school event along the Montgomery riverside, when he saw the melee develop and then explode.

“It happened so suddenly,” said Price, a father of three children. “We were just watching, and it was a nice and peaceful, watching everyone just observing things.”

But Price said he could see the seeds of tension beginning when he heard a member of the riverboat crew use a loudspeaker to ask, “Hey, can you move those boats, please?”

That polite tenor devolved within about 40 minutes, he said, as an attempt by someone to move an unmanned boat from the dock led to the first physical altercations.

“I wasn’t even going to get involved at first, and just stay where I was,” Price said.

“Then I noticed about six or seven people running toward (the riverboat co-captain), and from that point, it was pretty much an automatic reaction for me to start running toward them.”

When he arrived at the scrum, Price said he “just saw feet kicking” the co-captain in the head.

“My gameplan was pretty much just to push them all off and block some people,” he said.

After a few minutes, the violence cooled, but he still sensed tensions among the large group on the dock, Price said. He told some individuals they should leave before the melee restarted.

It was during those conversations when he earned the name “Michigan,” he said.

Meanwhile, he texted his daughter to remain at a distance from the area.

The second round of the brawl began shortly after a colleague of the co-captain swam onto the dock. Price resumed his efforts to separate people swinging at each other.

Price said he never felt endangered during the 20 minutes he spent among the flying fists and swinging chairs.

“There was no harm done to me,” he said. “Once I got in there, in the middle of everything, they saw I wasn’t trying to bring that type of energy.”

He left the dock once law enforcement agents arrived.

In the days since then, Price watched as footage of the fight earned attention worldwide.

Once he was identified for his role in trying to prevent the violence, he was invited on podcasts to talk about his role of the melee and its social implications.

“A lot of people are trying to promote this as about racism, and I don’t really think this was a racism thing,” said Price, who is Black.

The co-captain was Black and the people who pummeled him were white.

“Honestly, I think this was just a matter of doing the right thing versus doing the wrong thing,” Price said. “It was because of a series of bad choices.”

Price received accolades on social media from friends, family, and strangers alike, including in Michigan.

Price, who owns a trucking company called ALP Operations with his wife, doesn’t mind being tied to his hometown and state. With family and friends still in Michigan, the 1998 Buena Vista High School graduate returns to his home state at least once yearly.

“That’s where I’m from,” he said. “I love it.”

The man known as “Michigan” at the Saturday brawl remains less willing to accept his emerging reputation as a “hero,” though.

“I’ve heard people call me that, but I don’t feel it,” Price said. “I just feel as if I was a citizen that was there, and I gave a situation the attention it needed.”