Thursday, February 21, 2008

Nittany Lion Fight Club: not just for football anymore

Taking a page from the football team, the wrestling team got in the act and started a fight as well.

A Penn State wrestler accused of punching a fraternity member who denied him access to a party last year saw the charges against him bound over for trial in Centre County Court on Wednesday.

Mark Allen McKnight... appeared before Judge Leslie Dutchcot for a preliminary hearing Wednesday on a charge of simple assault and summary counts of harassment and disorderly conduct.

McKnight is Penn State's starter at 125 lbs. He is ranked 9th in the nation with an 11-6 record this season.

The alleged victim said his front teeth were loosened and had sliced open his lip when he was punched, according to the complaint. The man fell backward and hit his head on a wall, police said. McKnight and his teammates had fled the scene, according to police.

McKnight's attorney claims that Mark was not the one that threw the punch but he would never "turn over a teammate to save himself." This is one time I believe the defendant because Mark weighs in at 125 pounds which means one of three things: 1) Mark was not the person throwing the punch 2) the victim weighed in at an equally freakishly small size which is illogical if it was a bouncer trying to deny them entrance or 3) the guy has an incredibly weak glass jaw (where's Run's Avatar when I need it?).

8 comments:

Nick said...

Fraternities always throw the freshman out to watch the door, so we're not talking lineman sized bouncers here.

Dan Isaacs said...

Dude, My lil bro wrestled 126 when he was in college, and he would've had little trouble precipitating a visit to the dentist for anyone he was in a fight with. I don't think you appreciate how nasty wrestlers can be.

Galen said...

Dan,

Do not misinterpret my comments as a slight on wrestlers I believe in my heart of hearts that wrestlers are pound for pound the toughest and most skilled athletes in the world and I would not screw with one in any way shape or form. Having said that a punch is a punch and for it to knock the guy down it had to have some power behind it, not that I don’t believe Mark can punch hard but it just seems that it would have been one of the bigger wrestlers to be able to knock the guy over, but then again I’ve seen stranger things and maybe Nick is right and it was a smaller freshman.

Anonymous said...

having some wrestling insider info, Mark is really short and jacked, I mean he is the #9 kid in his weight class. He doesn't stand taller than 5'6. The kid he punched was the president of the fraternity, i think he was a senior, but my experience with frat presidents is they are usually unathletic pussies. Think about it, if it was a big dude, he would have rounded up the other brothers and brawled. The mistake Mark or whoever punched the kid was this: when they were leaving they said they were on the PSU wrestling team, (probably something like "Don't mess with us, we're wrestlers") so then the kid went on the PSU athletic page and looked up the kid.

P.S. There is a good article about this in today's collegian

Anonymous said...

and Mark is the one to the old guys left in the picture below. So you can see he can easily do some damage

Galen said...

It's interesting that the victim could not identify his assailant’s height, one would think that if a guy less than 5'6" tall punched you he would be easily identifiable. I think it’s in Mark’s favor that the victim went to the Wrestling home page to identify his assailant, that’s probably going to be shaky testimony during trial.

Nick said...

You'd think so Galen, then again DA rounded up the football team looking at the photos in a game program.

Anonymous said...

yeah, galen I was wondering that myself. If a kid is under 5'8, especially like 5'6, you should be able to describe and identify him easily. I think in the article it did say someone about the frat brother mentioning it was a really short kid. But my guess is that the pres was drinking and that affected his judgement