(Props: FilmDrunk)
Legendary ’70s rocker Steven Seagal was recently a guest on MMAFighting‘s “The MMA Hour,” and after firing off some dependably insane nonsense about how Jon Jones doesn’t punch or kick well, and how Anderson Silva “either fears me pretends to fear me,” Seagal got into the only topic that we really care to hear him address at this point: Whether or not “Judo” Gene LeBell literally choked the shit out of him circa 1990. As you can imagine, Seagal is on the “no, I didn’t shit my pants” side of the argument. Here’s what he said, as transcribed by our buds at FilmDrunk:
“I don’t even know if he is still alive. Is he still alive? I never knew this about him – either he is a pathological liar or he had somebody making up these stories. He came over to my trailer and I was with a guy called Conrad Palmisano who is still a legend, one of the greatest stunt co-ordinators in the history of Hollywood. [LeBell and I] were standing there talking about moves and stuff like that and we were just doing some stretching and he was showing me how you can stretch…he wanted to stretch my back and then I kind of flipped over the top of him and said ‘thank you for that.’
There was never any confrontation with him ever. In any way, shape or form. And I swear to god on my children – and they are the most precious thing in my life – if he is saying that he is a pathological scumbag liar. I keep answering that [question]. Either he made up this lie or someone made it up…Gene Le Bell has never even said anything impolite to me. When he has seen me he has been extremely polite to me and just acted like a friend. I think you know the truth here and everyone else knows the truth and if Gene is saying sh*t like that he should be ashamed of himself.
And after I heard this I did start to think of some other things he had said, like he said to me he had beat the shit out of Bruce Lee and I started to think well maybe this guy is a pathological liar. He should never make up these kind of sick…you know…It just makes him look like a total asshole. It makes him look like a demented child.”
There’s a little-known corollary to Occam’s razor called “Buster’s pickle-slicer,” which states the following: When two famous people tell conflicting stories of an alleged altercation, the more entertaining story is the usually the more accurate one, especially when it involves something humiliating happening to Steven Seagal. Considering that Seagal has a well-documented reputation for starting trouble on movie sets, shouldn’t we be more apt to believe LeBell’s version? And more importantly, isn’t that the version you want to believe?