Article content continued

Photo by James Park / Ottawa Citizen

Throughout the match, Hannibal and Soa Amin grappled and slammed into each other. Slaps that sounded entirely real echoed through the arena and the crash of body slams ricocheted from the walls. Groans and grunts and guttural bellows provided the underlying soundtrack.

And then after about 20 minutes of this, Hannibal decided he’d had enough.

While Soa Amin was on the ground, Hannibal turned to the suspended senator and backed him into the corner of the ring. Soa Amin got up and rushed toward them. Hannibal nimbly dodged out of the way, and the bounding Soa Amin, who looked like a human-sized fire hydrant, collided with Brazeau. The suspended senator slumped to the ground.

Hannibal then grabbed Soa Amin and ferociously body slammed him. Hannibal pinned him and one of the other referees rushed into the ring to count Soa Amin out.

But Hannibal wasn’t done yet.

He rounded on Brazeau, ripped the shirt from his chest, slapped him twice across the face and hauled him from the ring.

And then, in the climax, he smashed Brazeau through a brown folding table.

The crowd roared.

Photo by James Park / Ottawa Citizen

“I think he killed him,” someone yelled as referees congregated around a motionless Brazeau.

Brazeau said he didn’t do any particular training before the fight — “Just watching a lot of tapes and trying to get accustomed to the rulebook,” he said.

But the senator — who last year had a job at the Barefax strip club — looked a bit confused at certain points, especially when he intervened to prevent Hannibal from clobbering Soa Amin with a chair, only to have Soa Amin use it to whack Hannibal when his back was turned.

Earlier, the crowd — men, women, kids and adults — were spread out in bleachers and around the ring that was set up in the centre of the arena. Glistening wrestlers strutted from the dressing rooms through the players’ benches and emerged from a haze of artificial fog while the audience applauded (or booed, depending on who it was) before the gong sounded, kicking off the fight.

Many in the audience, though, weren’t even there to see Brazeau.

“I couldn’t care less, to be honest,” said Ryan Lesperance, when asked about the senator, adding “hopefully he has fun, too.”

Crystal Mask of Orleans didn’t even know Brazeau was scheduled to be there.

“That was a surprise,” Mask said. “Very awesome act, or fight.”