Today's drinking pro tip: If a bartender cuts you off, don't take a swing at him while yelling 'punch me in the face!'

An alleged inebriate who got cut off at Durty Nelly's, 108 Blackstone St. downtown, early one July evening, reached across the bar in an attempt to strike the bartender and yelled "Punch me in the face!" So the barkeep obliges and then, as the guy stumbled out of the bar and fell to the ground, followed him outside and kicked him in the face, breaking his jaw, police and one of the bar's owners told the Boston Licensing Board this morning.

It turned out the bartender himself was at least one sheet to the wind and he was immediately fired - after the staff of the nearby Green Dragon Tavern, owned by the same concern - closed up shop and rushed over to hoist him out of Durty Nelly's, Noelle Somers of the Somers Group told the board.

Police cited the bar was for both assault and battery - shod foot - by an employee on a patron and for not calling 911 after the incident. Somers told the board she only learned of the exchange of fists and the one-sided kick about an hour after the fact and that by the time the Green Dragon crew arrived - after another Durty Nelly's customer went over and alerted a manager there - the kicked man had left, of his own volition, and nobody thought he was injured because he got up and walked away on his own.

The man himself walked into a BPD station about four days later to report the incident.

The bartender, however, was immediately fired, Somers said. He'd been working there for about a year, had had no problems and was, in fact, a friend of the family, she said.

The board decides Thursday whether the incident warrants any sanction and, if so, what sort of punishment.