A student assaulted a police officer during a brawl on a night out in Leeds city centre.
Abdoulie Duanda, 20, pushed the officer to the ground as she and her colleagues tried to break up a fight.
Leeds Crown Court was shown CCTV footage of people fighting at the junction with Lower Briggate and Boar Lane at 1.55am on August 15 last year.
Police officers came on the scene with batons and Duanda walked away.
But he then ran back to the fight, lunging at a male on the ground with his foot and pushing the officer to the ground with his hands.
Prosecutor Lydia Carroll said the Crown Prosecution Service could not say how the fight started.
In his police interview, Duanda told police he remembered the incident as he only had one drink and he had been acting in self-defence.
He said he had been arguing with his girlfriend when two males approached them and got too close so he pushed one of them away, which resulted in a physical fight.
Duanda, of Waincliffe Place, Beeston, Leeds, pleaded guilty to affray and assaulting an emergency worker.
In November last year, a second person had been handed a community order over the affray.
Probation officer Mike Cooper said the long-term couple had been fighting over Duanda looking at other women on a night out.
He said Duanda studies property and real estate management at the University of Salford.
Recorder Joanne Kidd said: "It takes only a moment of reflection to imagine what it must be like for members of the emergency services to have to deal with this sort of event occurring in the early hours of the morning every Friday and Saturday.
"The level of that fighting was such that police had to become involved. Everybody had lost a degree of control at that point.
"For such an intelligent young man, deciding to go back and into the affray when police officers were on the scene is absolutely ludicrious."
Duanda told the judge that he only went back to the affray to protect a stranger who had tried to help him.
He was handed a 12-month community order with a requirement to carry out 150 hours of unpaid work and ordered to pay £300 towards prosecution costs.
Duanda's girlfriend sat in the public gallery during the sentencing hearing.
