The man who took the worst of the beating in a vicious hockey brawl in the stands at a Habs-Bruins showdown in Montreal Monday night spoke out Wednesday.
Joey Stang, a 30-year-old Bruins fan from Cornwall, Ont. spoke to CTV Montreal about the brawl inside the Bell Centre that was captured on video, and viewed on YouTube over 244,000 times.
"I'm pissed off," he said. "Because I'm 5 foot 4, 150 pounds, and the first guy that grabbed onto me was 6 foot some, 200 pounds."
Stang said he didn't provoke the fight but that the man he was sitting with - a friend of a friend he didn't know well - was loudly taunting Montreal Canadiens goaltender Carey Price.
"I could see the (problem the) whole time from the first period to the third. I tried to calm him down, but what are you going to do? I'm not going to leave my seat," said the Bruins fan.
Close to the end of the game, Stang said a group of large men attacked them.
"A fight is a fight," he said. "It happens. But when you have some guy kicking you in the face from behind, when you're already getting beat up by a guy who's twice your size..."
Security said it had arrived and pulled the men apart and warned them to quiet down, however Stang denies that occurred.
"That never happened. I guarantee nobody ever came up to anybody and said, ‘Keep it down or watch your mouths,'" he said.
Stang was thrown out of the Bell Centre following the brawl.
While his eye is healing, he said his pride still hurts.
"It wasn't a fair fight. The guy would have won the fight either way. Why did they need three other guys kicking me like I was a soccer ball?" he said.
Stang admits that he may have played a role in taunting Habs fans, he doesn't think his actions warranted the beating.
"What gives people the right?" he said. "For four people to jump on one guy or because someone was mouthing off?"
Stang said he is not pressing any charges in the brawl.
