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.
Matt Labov, a Los Angeles-based publicist for Baron
Cohen, said he had no comment Monday about the faked fights.
One of Baron Cohen's movies is due out next year.
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.
Matt Labov, a Los
Angeles–based publicist for Baron Cohen, said he had
no comment Monday about the faked fights. One of Baron
Cohen's movies is due out next year.
The day after the
June 5 Texarkana bout, Fort Smith's convention center
hosted ''Blue Collar Brawlin'. '' Fort Smith police sergeant
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.
Producers said
''there would be a romantic embrace,'' Holland said.
''They said it was kind of to essentially make fun, poke fun
at wrestling -- two guys rolling around on the floor,
all sweaty.''
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. Convention center sales director Karin Hobbs
declined to name the event's sponsor Monday.
Baron Cohen
became a national celebrity after his 2006 hit movie
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make
Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, in which he
played a bumbling reporter from the Central Asia
nation.
News of the faked
cage fights comes as Baron Cohen is in production of a
movie titled Bruno, named after the gay
Austrian fashion reporter he developed for Da AliG Show. Baron Cohen, in the guise of Bruno,
often interviewed hapless subjects in the South.
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-governor Mike Huckabee fell for a prank and
congratulated Canada for preserving its icebound
parliament, calling it a ''national igloo.'' (Jon Gambrell,
AP)
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