Gets down and dirty with

• Struggles with, as a varmint
• Fights without punchin'
• Scraps in the backwoods
• Goes at it, so to speak
• Gits in a scrap (with)
• Fights in the sticks
• Grapples, in dialect
• Tangles with, in the country

Wiktionary Word definitions in Wiktionary
vb. (en-third-person singular of: rassle)