When one intends to say that someone is beating someone else up, giving the other person a thrashing, or otherwise attempting to inflict bodily harm, the verb one should use is whale. Not wail.
This is not a new usage; it’s been around for more than 200 years.
I suppose most people who do bother to check a dictionary for wail don’t see a definition that fits and assume it’s a slang meaning, and it never occurs to them to check whale, which does have an entry (transitive verb) for this meaning?
Cool, that’s a word I’ve never heard before in that usage – thanks!