A man had to curl into a ball on the ground as his neighbour punched and kicked him repeatedly, a Wanganui judge said.
"There [are] no two ways about it, this was an ugly and somewhat vicious assault," Judge David Cameron said.
Gary Holland had been sitting on his front porch on January 15 when he saw the victim, the judge said in the Whanganui District Court on Tuesday.
"As the victim walked past, the defendant yelled out to the victim, 'I didn't knock on your door'," he said.
Holland had then approached the victim and knocked him to the ground with a punch to the side of his face.
He had continued his attack for about 30 seconds, after which the victim had managed to get up and escape to neighbouring house.
As he escaped, Holland had yelled after him to keep running, Judge Cameron said.
The victim had suffered two lumps above his right eye, a lump to the top of his head, and complained of a sore jaw.
Holland, who had 10 previous assault convictions, had claimed that the victim had "pressured him" over the preceding five months.
Defence lawyer Stephanie Burlace said police accepted Holland had been having issues with the neighbour.
"To use his words, he really just felt that he had been pushed and pushed and in the end, snapped," she said.
Holland had since moved to Feilding.
Judge Cameron sentenced him to five months of community detention with a 7pm-7am curfew.