Whenever scuffles break out outside the ring or cage, it is expected that bystanders or authority figures will step in to stop the melee. But there was one point during Pride FC’s glory days when two fighters went at it backstage until one of them ended up being choked to sleep.
It all happened at Pride: Shockwave on December 31st 2005 in Saitama, where Charles “Krazy Horse” Bennett fought and won against Japanese actor turned fighter Ken Kaneko. Kaneko was cornered by Cristiano Marcello, who at the time, was affiliated with Chute Boxe Academy.
As Marcello himself had claimed in a 2010 interview, he went on to challenge Krazy Horse after the fight inside the locker room that the two opposing teams shared that night. It then quickly escalated when Bennett, seemingly irate by the callout, began talking trash and suddenly lunged at Marcello, igniting a full-scale yet rather technical brawl.
Funnily enough, none of the Chute Boxe guys intervened to stop the ruckus. Instead, they were shouting off instructions at Marcello, who was fighting mostly from the guard.
The video was cut at the 1:52 mark, and suddenly went back up with Marcello already having a triangle choke locked and secured. Krazy Horse refused to tap which led to him being put to sleep. Many have speculated that Bennett may have been jumped by the entire Chute Boxe team, which was why an edited video instead of a full clip was made to surface.
The two men have since buried the hatchet, as seen in a Facebook post by Marcello late last year. The same cannot be said, however, between Bennett and Wanderlei Silva, who were involved in a hotel lobby brawl in Japan, ahead of the Rizin World Grand Prix 2016.
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