Did Borat strike again with gay kiss at cage-fight?
Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen is suspected of orchestrating a homoerotic spectacle that went “right up to the line” of the US state of Arkansas’s morality laws.
At two cage-fighting events in the state last month, which promised “hot chicks, cold beer and hardcore fights,” crowds came to see wrestlers beat each other to a pulp — but instead they saw two men kissing and gyrating.
Crowds of 1,000 people were attracted to Red White and Blood in Texarkana and Blue Collar Brawlin in Fort Smith, advertised on websites such as Craigslist.
The Daily Telegraph reports that Baron Cohen’s spokesman has refused to confirm that the comedian was behind this latest prank.
Punters were charged $5 (£2.50) to enter the event and were plied with $1 beer, but were also told to leave their phones and cameras in their cars.
They were also made to sign release forms, saying they were willing to appear on camera.
T-shirts reading “Straight Dave’s United Straights of America”, emblazoned with pictures of guns, beers and bikini-clad breasts, were handed out at the event while audience members were encouraged to sing stridently heterosexual songs.
At the Fort Smith event, a series of “unevenly matched” fights followed, with a character named “Straight Dave”, who some witnesses identified as Cohen, coming out to goad the crowd between the bouts.
A witness said:
“Towards the end a guy got into the ring with Borat [and] staged a short fight and before long Borat had him pinned against the cage kissing him as the stands were clearing from the homo activity.
“I looked back to see Borat on his knees in front of the unknown man, you can figure the rest.”
Cohen is currently working on a new film revolving around a gay Austrian reporter with a liking for mesh T-shirts.
The film’s working title is Bruno: 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.
Earlier this week Cohen is alleged to have tricked a former Israeli intelligence officer and a Palestinian academic into discussing the difference between Hamas and hummus.
The actor first became popular with in 2000 with his Ali G character and was propelled to mega-stardom after he released Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan in 2006.
Cohen’s bumbling, sexist, prostitute-loving Kazakh journalist Borat deceived Americans and Romanian villagers into ‘appearing’ right-wing and backward on camera, leading to several lawsuits against the actor.
His stunts included convincing a bar full of people in a small US town to repeatedly sing “throw the Jew down the well” and presenting a bag full of excrement to his hostess at a dinner party.
