That part of the story reminded me of a common "bar fight" scene from action movies.
You have the hero and you need to see his strength, so he will enter a bar, and there, he will have an artificial scene with an unimportant guy that usually starts along the lines of "you're sitting on my chair!" in a drunk accent.
One spinning kick later, you have that guy flying outside the window, and the hero calmly leaves after paying 5 bucks for the broken window (don't they know how much these things cost?)
Mookie tried to do the same here, but with one crucial difference: I don't know any hero that during the scene said something like "I moved to this city so I can beat the crap out of people like you instead of risking a real fight", and say it PROUDLY.
He tried to repair the damage later, but the hero asked "was it a good thing to hit the guy in the bar?" instead of the actual problem.