Nothing good happens after 2 a.m.
A zealous Cleveland Browns fan–Is there any other?–allegedly sparked a brawl by seeking a hug from Johnny Manziel at The 9 hotel in Cleveland on Friday.
“I’m the biggest Browns fan ever,” Chris Gonos reports telling Manziel. “I love you, I want to give you a hug.”
Gonos says that Manziel’s entourage, evidently believing that arms are for punching rather than hugging, attacked him. He claims Johnny Football morphed into Johnny Boxer by clobbering his brother in the face.
Gonos offered a detailed description of the melee to Doug Brown of Clevescene.com:
Yeah, it actually all started through me. We had a room — it was my brother’s birthday — so we were staying at the Metropolitan at the 9. We partied there, and at the end of the night I was going back up to my room, and I noticed the guy. I was like, ‘Man, that’s Johnny Manziel.’ They were trying to keep it quiet, keep it low, and I was like ‘Johnny Football!’ I was just excited. But anyways, I went to give him like a handshake, or dap or whatever you want to call it, one of his buddies like tackled me. It was going down, a whole bunch of people started fighting. It ended pretty quick.
I got a bruised hip and a bruised elbow, and somebody hit me in the back of the head, too. My brother saw what was going on and he ran he tackled Johhny Manziel — I guess he got the sack and the fumble. He tackled him, yeah, I’m talking about he speared him all the way to the back wall. I was cornered; I was by myself and Johnny Manziel and like three or four of his buddies were all coming at me. (My brother) just came to help me out, and I guess Johnny sucker punched him while the security guard was holding him. It should be all on video.
No [one was arrested], like 20 officers came and I was sitting in the lobby because I did not do anything wrong but be a fan. All these cops run into the lobby, and they’re like, “Who was fighting, who was fighting?” and I just raised my hand, and was like, listen, watch the camera, and stuff like that. I may be guilty of being a fan, but that’s about it. I even showed them the guy that sucker punched me and the cops walked right up to him, talking to him for a while, and they let us all go. They just told me I had to leave the hotel, and me and my ride, we left. Manziel never punched me, but he got a sucker punch on my brother.
I know somebody else in the group smashed Johnny right in the face. Smashed him, smashed him. I watched the whole game to see if we could spot him on the sidelines.
The police responded to the brawl and the Browns claim to have addressed the situation with their back-up quarterback.