MADISON, Ill. -- Brad Keselowski is ready for whatever fight Carson Hocevar -- or anyone in the NASCAR Cup Series garage -- is going to put up against him and his organization.

"Bring it. I'll fight back with anybody in the garage," Keselowski said Saturday in the World Wide Technology Raceway Gateway media center.

Keselowski is outspoken after an incident with Hocevar in last Sunday's Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway. At the end of the first stage, Hocevar bumped into Keselowski and spun him out to end the stage under caution. 

Hocevar finished 11th while Keselowski finished 26th. Keselowski was mad walking out of Darlington and was still a little hot at Gateway. 

"My car is not in the Chase but we have a lot of things to race for and commitments, things to do people who work really hard on the car, so we have to balance that with things that happened last week. So that's my challenge, to balance performance while not letting a fire spread, for all intents and purposes of being taken advantage of. " Keselowski said. "You live and you figure it out in the moment."

Keselowski has never been one to back down from a fight, even when someone has tried to body-slam him into submission.

In 2014, after an on-track incident at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Matt Kenseth ambushed Keselowski over the incident. Then, a few weeks later at Texas Motor Speedway, he made contact with Jeff Gordon in an incident that sparked a pit road brawl.

The parallels between Keselowski and Hocevar are similar, to some extent.

"I hesitate to speak for him and his scenario. I don't wear his shoes but everyone's situation is different. Nobody walks in or out of it different," Keselowski said.

Keselowski has walked on to become the old sage of a veteran in a similar manner as Kenseth and Gordon were back in 2014.

Now in his 17th full-time Cup Series season, with 36 career wins, a championship all the way back in his third career season and a team owner for now five seasons, Keselowski has cemented his legacy as a shoe-in for the NASCAR Hall of Fame. However, there's more that he wants out of the end of his career, with just one win in five NextGen seasons.

This season started out promising, climbing to ninth in the standings with four top-10 finishes in the first quarter of the season (nine races). He dominated at Darlington, leading 142 of 293 laps and scoring one of two top-five finishes in that nine-race stretch.

However, in the 17 races after that to set the Chase, he had just two top-10 finishes and nine finishes of 26th or worse that shut him out of the Chase in 18th. 

Keselowski has nothing to lose except to possibly teach a lesson to Hocevar, who has drawn comparisons to 1990s driver Ernie Irvan. Back then, drivers came together for an intervention with Irvan after multiple incidents with him, akin to Hocevar.

However, Keselowski doesn't think that would work today.

"We're in a different day-and-age which is greater than our sport. It transcends our society as a whole where that level of social interaction isn't valued as much as it was 10, 20, 30 years ago. Someone has to touch a hot stove and learn," Keselowski said.

Keselowski has toyed with possibly paying back Hocevar and even outright said Hocevar has one coming. While NASCAR CEO Steve O'Donnell has said he's looking forward to what both of them will say, the sanctioning body has punished drivers for acting on their intentions.

After the May race at Texas Motor Speedway, Ryan Preece lost 25 driver points after threatening to spin Ty Gibbs and spinning him in an incident that ended his day. 

Keselowski slightly indicated if he's worried about the precedent they set with his driver.

"NASCAR has gotta do what they gotta do to keep the sport successful and protect it for generations to come. There's a good feel for where those lines are and they move... And I respect that," Keselowski said. "I guess we'll see in real-time [if I cost myself from teaching a lesson]."

Whatever Keselowski may do, it'll come from being a student of the sport who has now turned into a professor of it.

"I think there's good bad blood and bad bad blood. It depends who ends up in the crossfire from time to time and the sport is always walking a fine line with some aspects of really high level professionalism, world class engineering and training, world class athletes and other aspects that are more entertainment-centric and I think it has to be careful to not tip its hand one way or another. But that's hard, because some races are demo derbies... and others are more technical... and rivalries are no different," Keselowski said.

Keselowski will start 23rd. In practice, he was 16th fastest overall with the eighth-best 10-lap average. Meanwhile, Hocevar will start sixth after running sixth fastest overall in practice with the third-best 10-lap average.