If you read my post you will realise I am referring to last time this happened, the incident in el diablos post, not last night.
I know the bloke personally from THAT incident, and it was indeed a set up.
This is akin to industrial or corporate espionage
I am almost positive there is something behind this from an organisation somewhere, not limiting this to the AFL.
And I do not normally believe in conspiracies, but seriously, what can one assume.
I get that its probably just an unfortunate incident. So to is the fact that a role model resorting to violence is a bad look.
You can call it violence, but you could also call it guts and balls. Standing up for yourself.
Out of two "alpha" options...punching your tormentor and allowing it to run like water off a ducks back by saying something like "haha, whatever, have a good one" and walking away....he chose the former.
I have no problems with that. But the law might. However, his physical "attack" happened after provocation and a late night (but not drunk), so if anything he should escape.
And just on being alpha: what about the wimps involved in provoking him....they taunt him then act like sooks when he lashes out (as would be expected).
You see, for these reasons and more, I suspect this was a setup. It would not be hard to track benji's whereabouts. And from a corporate espionage point of view, it would make sense to drag leagues poster boy in some mud.
Yet at the end of the day I doubt people will hold it against him. Tho, too much use of aggression will lead people being able to extract predictable responses out of you (your fists)....so any long term strategy that works will only include the ignore option. And we all know thats sometimes hard.
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a possible counter is that the story as reported is inaccurate and the aggressor was only benji. One may not discount that fully yet the evidence does not support it. Plus, they followed him to provoke him more - so the story goes.
I would only place no more than a 5% chance of this. We are talking about benji marshall and all he has said and done.
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One more thing to consider is the media blow up. Benji "tapped" him on the nose. I have been in a few fights, seem them, we all see UFC, etc. When you want to turn someone off of aggravating you - as a man - you can give him a little jab and kind of ask "well, do you want more of that and harder? I'm not afraid to hit you, and beat you, so lets end this before it really starts"
This kind of thing, which I suspect may of happened in this case, is a far cry from getting into a brawl and trying to maim the guy or hurt him badly.
