It was supposed to be a scripted fight between a professional wrestler and mixed martial arts fighter — a crowd-pleasing crossover performance intended to draw maximum online fans with a dramatic storyline.
But the battle quickly turned ugly and violent as shocked spectators watched MMA fighter Raja Jackson slam opponent Stuart “Syko Stu” Smith to the mat and unleash a torrent of blows to the motionless wrestler’s head.
As multiple wrestlers rushed to subdue Jackson, Smith lay bleeding and convulsing on the canvas.
Now, as the Los Angeles Police Department investigates the Aug. 23 incident as a case of suspected felony battery, detectives and event organizers are trying to determine how a routine wrestling match could go so horribly wrong.
In a sport that derives its popularity by blurring the line between fiction and reality, professional wrestlers are encouraged to stay in character whenever they are in the public eye — an ethos known as “kayfabe.” But recorded images of the incident and interviews with witnesses suggest this tacit agreement between competitors was tragically absent during the Sun Valley bout.
Some suggest the bloody scene at KnokX Pro Wrestling Academy was instigated backstage, and was the result of a fateful clash between two very different sporting cultures. Professional wrestlers, they say, are accustomed to performing predetermined matches that blend entertainment and athleticism. MMA fighters, however, compete in an actual combat sport where matches are decided on the basis of strength and technique, not a theatrical script.
KnokX Pro Wrestling Academy in Sun Valley.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Jackson did not respond to multiple inquiries from The Times about the incident.
The son of former UFC light-heavyweight champion Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, the MMA fighter had been invited to watch the match and was broadcasting his visit on the livestream platform Kick. That’s when he first met Smith, who surprised Jackson by slamming a beer can on his head in front of his own streaming audience.
According to interviews with wrestlers who witnessed the incident, Smith appeared to be in character, and playing a persona familiar to his wrestling fans.
Jackson, however, appeared to have taken the action as a real affront. Although Smith attempted to apologize, video showed that Jackson initially refused to shake his hand. Meanwhile, other wrestlers spun the beer can assault into a dramatic storyline: Jackson, they say, should run into the ring during Syko Stu’s match and exact vengeance — but only as a performance.
Video shows it went beyond that. Two witnesses said children in the audience screamed in horror as Jackson delivered 23 punches to Smith’s head, breaking teeth and drawing blood. Four wrestlers jumped in to pull Jackson off as others looked on horrified, unsure whether what was happening in the ring was real.
“The whole situation is just god-awful,” said Douglas Malo, a wrestler who pulled Jackson off Smith. “There’s no way through that. Everybody is hurting.”
‘They should have aborted’
Maven Huffman, a former WWE wrestler, said it is common to draw on real-world stories and tension to create storylines that add drama to matches.
“Personal issues draw money, and if there’s real-life animosity between people who want to use that, you want to get mileage out of it,” Huffman said. “But it’s done between guys that are workers, who know the business.”
Even if real tension is used for a wrestling storyline, Huffman said, it needs to be used by professionals who know where to draw the line, and who trust each other to keep each other safe in the ring.
“You’re telling the other person, I trust you, I trust you as much as possible with my health and safety,” Huffman said. “You can utilize real-life storylines, but you need all parties to be on the same page.”
Huffman, who viewed several portions of the livestream, said it seemed as if Jackson — a trained competitive fighter — may have taken a real offense to the incident. He wondered whether they neglected to check with Jackson and how he would respond in the ring. If they didn’t do that, it could be dangerous, he said.
“The moment that he hits him with the can, Raja, his mindset, his temperament completely changed,” he said, based on what he saw in the livestream. “They should have aborted.”
‘Give him his receipts’
Huffman said streaming now adds a complicated layer to the industry, as wrestlers captured in the middle of ongoing, nonstop streaming look to stay in character when they otherwise wouldn’t be.
“We live in a world now where as much attention happens to what happened outside the ring and backstage as to what goes on in the ring,” Huffman told The Times. “People make a living from behind the scenes.”
Jackson, whose livestream had generated a large online following, was invited to the event by another KnokX wrestler, Andre Joel Hudson, who told The Times he paid $30 a piece for VIP backstage access tickets for Jackson and a friend.
“His friend was the one with the freaking camera,” Hudson said.
Footage from the livestream, as well as witness interviews, suggests Jackson was not about to brush off the beer can episode — even after Smith expressed remorse.
“I apologize,” Smith is heard saying in the video, at one point gesturing directly to the camera. “I didn’t know, I thought you were a worker” — meaning someone in the industry who wrestles and performs under a stage name and a persona.
Malo, whose stage name is “The Epic,” said Jackson’s visit backstage with a camera prompted several of the performers to stay in character, including Smith.
“Stu is thinking, we’re going to do something with this, the camera is here, this is a setup and I have to perform,” Malo said. “But Raja [Jackson] isn’t a worker. He’s a fighter.”
In an Instagram post addressing the controversy, Jackson’s father, Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, blasted wrestlers for hitting his son, but also criticized his son for not going to police after being hit with the beer can.
“If my son would’ve just went to the police when the beer can incident happened then the whole event could’ve gotten shut down,” Jackson wrote.
Reno Anoa’i, one of the co-owners of the venue, did not respond to a request for comment, but in a statement KnockX confirmed that the attack had been initially planned as a wrestling spot.
Anoa’i is also heard in the livestreamed video telling Smith that Jackson would be running into the middle of his scheduled match for a planned confrontation in the ring, what is commonly referred to as a “run-in.”
Later that day on the video, Hudson is seen walking down a hall with Jackson in a black hat and costume.
“When you run out on his s—, you f— give him his receipts,” Hudson tells Jackson on the video. “You remember what a receipt is?”
As match time approached, Jackson sat in the stands and seemed to express frustration over his treatment.
“You just can’t hit a can on my face,” Jackson said on livestream as he sat in the stands awaiting his cue. “This s— isn’t going to be scripted.”
Malo, who had just finished a match, said he was told of the planned “run-in” between Smith and Jackson just as he was told to head out to the stage and keep an eye on the match, just in case.
He said he was still trying to find out what was supposed to happen when he looked into the ring, saw Jackson holding Smith in the air and saw him violently dropping his body on the mat.
“It kind of looked like work for a second, but then the slam happened,” Malo said.
Another wrestler, Kevin Thomas, said he couldn’t see the ring, but that he suddenly heard the screams of fans, and knew something was terribly wrong.
Malo said he ran into the ring and tried to restrain Jackson.
Jackson swung at Malo, hitting him on the side of his head and splitting his scalp open, he said. Malo bit the martial arts fighter at one point, worried he’d be overpowered by a better-trained fighter.
When three other wrestlers jumped into the ring, they were able to hold Jackson back.
In the wake of the incident, Kick has permanently banned Jackson from the streaming platform. “KICK’s community guidelines make it clear that excessive violence is not permitted,” a company spokesperson told The Times.
‘You need to explain this’
According to friends of Smith, the wrestler is recovering from his injuries and was recently released from the hospital. It’s unclear how much of the incident he recalls. A GoFundMe account has been created by his fiancee and has raised more than $200,000 for his recovery.
KnokX Pro Wrestling Academy, as well as some of its wrestlers, have also been left reeling from the episode. At least two told The Times they plan to leave the academy because of the incident.
Thomas said World Wrestling Entertainment, or WWE, severed a program it maintained with KnokX to try to funnel wrestlers from local circuits to the wrestling entertainment giant — a dream of many in the industry.
Hudson said he’s been heavily criticized by colleagues and strangers for his comments in the moments before the incident. Some, including Malo, accuse him of egging Jackson on.
“You’re taking that guy, trained by one of the greatest fighters of all time, all the volatility in the world, and you’re gassing him up and putting him in a situation and telling him to commit violence,” Malo said.
When asked by The Times whether his comments to “give him his receipts” could have incited Jackson to violence, Hudson declined to answer. When asked the question on a podcast recently, Hudson said that he was speaking in “character.”
The day after the attack, a video snippet of Hudson’s “receipts” comments was shared on a private group chat for KnokX wrestlers. Several wrestlers expressed anger, according to screenshots reviewed by The Times.
“You need to explain this,” one person wrote in the chat. “Everyone blaming you last night and I shut that s—- down and now we see this!”
“Explain what exactly?” Hudson replied. “That I asked for this man [Jackson] to get a VIP pass to the back and meet with Reno [Anoa’i] which was granted; which somehow makes me responsible for his actions going against whatever agreement yall made with him in a match that I didn’t see nor was even present for until after it was all said and done?”
Since then, Hudson said he’s no longer associated with the gym.
“My life is ruined,” Hudson told The Times, adding that he is having difficulty finding work. “Who the hell is going to want to work with me when you hear the crap that’s out there.
‘Took things too far’
On Monday, Quinton “Rampage” Jackson spoke out about the incident on Instagram, and said his son “took things too far.”
The elder Jackson referred to his son as a “POS” but seemed to also lay some of blame on Smith, accusing him of being inebriated.
“If psycho Stu [Stuart Smith] wasn’t drunk and wouldn’t have hit my son over the head with a (real beer can) while he was live streaming on his own stream then Knox wouldn’t have felt like they had to make things right,” Quinton Jackson wrote, adding that his son was told he could “get his ‘get back’ in the ring.”
It’s unclear if Smith had been drinking before the performance.
“It was staged!” the father wrote. “But Raja took it too far! He only shook his hand and accepted psycho Stu’s [Stuart Smith’s] drunken apology because they said he could get in the storyline! He was told he could ‘f—- him up.’”
Quinton Jackson wrote that his son “should face the consequences for going too far.”
The father also warned that, had he been there, he too would have reacted to Smith’s decision to smash a been can on his son’s head.
“If you get paid to do fake fighting don’t disrespect people that do the s— for real,” he wrote.