FIGHT AT TOP GEAR FESTIVAL UPDATE

Hello again la tricks, many of you will have read my previous post regarding the fight at the Top Gear Festival, involving two Durban MMA Fighters.

2oceansvibe has the version of Lee Dyer, one of the fighters caught on tape. It is always important to get the full facts / versions before passing judgement or commenting on the behavior of others, so I suggest that you give it a read below. 

However, lets also remember that there are at least three versions of any story : his side, her side and the truth. (postmodernists will argue that there are many versions of the truth, but this is not the time for a philosophical debate...).

ANYWAY, here is what I think :

Yes the video does not show the entire fight. Yes we don't see the whole 'story'. BUT I still believe that at that moment where the chair was thrown, he should have walked away. The retaliation was delayed, and an (apparently) innocent person was hurt in the cross-fire (Is cross-fire appropriate? I don't know what the appropriate term for being caught in a chair-throwing-fight would be? Cross-chair? Mid-seat?).

I also don't actually think that there is any excuse for anyone who gets involved in a physical altercation like that, unless it is TRUE self-defense.

What do you think?

 Below is Dyer's version, which can be found at 2oceansvibe:

There have been a lot stupid comments. And what gets me is that 90% of people commenting weren’t even there.
I’m a family man. I have a wife and two beautiful daughters. I’m a pro boxer, I don’t need to fight people.

Yes, I’ve been in trouble before, but a simple reading of news reports shows that I was found not guilty [on the 2009 charges of assault]. I was targeted because I’m a professional fighter, and CCTV footage showed that steel chairs were actually thrown at us in that incident, not the other way around.

Trouble always seems to find me, but I never go out anywhere to fight.
At the Top Gear Festival I was walking with my wife, and Trevor [white vest, black cap] and his wife. The three gents you see lying on the floor in the video were walking towards us, and they were clearly drunk, I walked around them on the left, and my wife went to my right.

As we passed them, they turned and said, ‘I’d love to grab a piece of this arse!’, and they grabbed my wife’s buttocks. So I tried to throw my beer on one of them, but I was carrying a can so very little came out.

At that point one of the three guys squared up at me and threw a punch. I ducked his punch and turned, and as I turned someone else started hitting the guy. I did retaliate, to defend myself after that man took a swing at me. Then the whole scurry broke out, and my back was turned to the tent. There was such a scene I honestly don’t know who else got involved besides those three guys and myself.

I tried to pick a guy up, because he was lying in a foetal position. As I tried to pick him up, I ripped his shirt a bit. Then a man hit me on the head with a steel chair.
I turned around and he was just saying, ‘Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!’
If you watch that video again, you’ll see when I turn my face, the left side of face is covered in blood.

That man [in the blue shirt, to the right of the frame] hit me over the head with a chair after the fracas had ended.
That’s when I lost it, which is what you see on the video. Unfortunately that woman was standing there.

I did go off my head, and I did throw the chair. That man cracked me a solid shot over the head with that chair. But no one sees that on the video. What you see on the video is such a totally narrow view. You don’t see the drunk guys start it, you don’t see any of the actual fight, and you don’t see that guy, who wasn’t involved in the original fight as far as I can see, smack me with a bar stool once the fight was over while my back was turned.

I’m not the animal that people are saying I am.
I’ve got the cut on my head. I needed stitches in my head, but didn’t get any because I was locked up. I got arrested at the stadium right then and there.
I’ve laid a charge against him, but I don’t know who he is. If I find out who is, he’ll be charged with gross bodily harm.

Something a lot of people have said is that they hope those three guys who were lying on the floor are okay, and so on. They’re perfectly fine. When I was in the cell and the police were taking statements, a police officer informed me that the three guys were perfectly fine. They only have soft tissue injuries, and nothing else. I suffer worse injuries every day in sparring. And in fact, out of everyone I have the worst injuries. My head is badly cut, and my back is killing me.

They reason they look like that in the video is because of how drunk they were! If you’re that drunk, and you get in a fight, you’ll probably pass out.
I understand that people probably think Trevor looks terrifying because he has tattoos and weighs 118 kilograms, but he’s a lovely man. But is that your only reason for judging someone? I mean, how narrow minded are people?
Out I’m sorry about everything and happened, this is not what I go out and do.