Almost 2 years later, on August 17, 2000, he was signed as a free agent by the Columbus Blue Jackets and played one game for them in the 2000–01 season. During that one game, he had ten minutes in penalties. After that, he played fairly regularly as the Blue Jackets' enforcer averaging over 200 minutes in penalties a season. He fought Bob Probert in each of the three periods in a 2–1 Blue Jackets loss to the Chicago Blackhawks at the United Center on January 10, 2002. The three fights by the same two adversaries in a single NHL match would next be achieved fourteen years later when Evander Kane and Alex Petrovic did it on February 9, 2016. During the 2003–04 NHL season, he got into a career-high 30 fights. He played five-and-a-half seasons for the Blue Jackets.