A viral video of a scuffle in the stands at a college football game took a twist when commenters asserted the Black man being escorted out was defending himself.
“So tell me this,” began a top comment by Instagram user A1Soul. “Why is everybody asking the young gentleman to leave and not the guy who started it?”
The video, posted in late October, does not show how the fight began; however, several people who said they attended the game turned up in the comments section of Instagram to corroborate A1Soul’s claim.
The disagreement broke out during the Oct. 25 match between the University of Alabama and the University of South Carolina. The 15-second clip showed a lone Black man wearing a Gamecocks jersey in a sea of riled-up white spectators. Standing one row below him was a stout Alabama fan, dressed in pink, Crimson Tide gear, who suddenly pushed him in the chest.
The Black man immediately retaliated with a quick slap to the face, earning him the nickname “Mr. quick hands” — and triggering a firestorm of obscenities from the Alabama fan.
Bystanders could be heard hollering and heckling all around as fellow Carolina fans linked arms with the Black man, seemingly to restrain him despite his calm demeanor. Perhaps they sensed what people in the comments section speculated might happen. “A slap in the face instead of a punch is a clear message,” noted one. “Pink shirt all bark no bite… he was about to be laid out, wondering what happened… that slap was a warning!”
As the Carolina fan was guided out of the stands, he paused and turned around to blow kisses at the white man, sending him into a full-blown meltdown. “I’ll f-ck you up, b-itch ass!” he screamed, while his friends urged him to “chill” and a bystander joked, “calm down, tough guy.”
As he flung around his gym towel and screamed f-you, viewers on the internet chimed in with their own assessments.
“Imagine being 50 and getting in a fight in the nose bleeds at a college football game,” wrote one. “Then getting a slap in the face and blown kiss…. You lose. Game over. Cash in that life insurance for your beneficiaries.”
Another said, “You can’t play ‘Billy Badass’ after a kid half your age —with GLASSES—slaps you in the face & blows you a kiss afterwards-!!!”
All joking aside, viewers are still wondering why the Carolina fan was forced to leave, and not the aggressor. “But why the Black guy being escorted out when we all see who started it all?”
