Fake Cage Fight Duped Arkansas Spectators

Possibly set up by Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat)

Source: CBS

Crowds in Arkansas came for the lure of cage fighting and $1 beer, but police say what they got instead was men ripping each others’ clothes off and kissing - a stunt suspected of being orchestrated by Sacha Baron Cohen of “Borat” fame.

“We had a contract for cage fighting. We were deceived,” said Dwight Duncan, president and CEO of Four States Fair Grounds in Texarkana, where the first of two Arkansas fights raised suspicions last month.

The day after the June 5 Texarkana bout, Fort Smith’s convention center hosted “Blue Collar Brawlin.”‘ Fort Smith police Sgt. Adam Holland said organizers told him a character named “Straight Dave” would goad a planted audience member into the ring for a fight. The two men would then wrestle, rip away some of their clothes and share a brief kiss reminiscent of one between Baron Cohen and Will Ferrell in the film “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.”

An elaborate array of mounted and handheld video cameras caught the crowd of 1,600’s reaction as the two men “went right up to the line” of the city’s morality laws, Holland said. The two men stripped down to their underwear, kissed and rubbed on each other, the sergeant said. The audience, as well as local fighters drawn to take part in the show, became enraged. “It set the crowd off lobbing beers,” Holland said. “They had beers in plastic cups. Those things can get some distance on them actually.”

Holland said it took officers about 45 minutes to clear the convention center, as the two actors sprinted away through a specially set-aside tunnel. Those in attendance were told by several signs on display that they’d be filmed, Holland said, and signed waivers before the event.

If the cage match visits came from Baron Cohen, it wouldn’t be the first time Arkansas fell for a practical joke. In 2000, then-Gov. Mike Huckabee fell for a prank and congratulated Canada for preserving its icebound Parliament, calling it a “national igloo.”

The Smoking Gun seems to confirm that this is indeed a setup for Cohen’s new movie based around his Bruno character. The movie’s title is, apparently, Brüno: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Heterosexual Males Visibly Uncomfortable in the Presence of a Gay Foreigner in a Mesh T-Shirt