Gary Payton's Toronto Strip Club Fight Re-Enacted

In 2003, Milwaukee Bucks teammates Gary Payton, Sam Cassell and Jason Caffey were charged with beating up a male exotic dancer outside of a Toronto night club. Nearly four years later this past February the case was finally dismissed, despite the fact the fact the presiding judge admitted that he believed Payton started the whole thing. From the National Post:

Mr. Justice William Bassel said he believed that former Milwaukee Bucks player Gary Payton instigated the fight outside For Your Eyes Only strip club on April 11, 2003, after Adrian Cimpean's girlfriend, exotic dancer Vida Asante, spurned his advances.

Mr. Payton, 38, along with teammates Sam Cassell, 36, and Jason Caffey, 33, were each charged with one count of assault causing bodily harm.

But Judge Basel questioned the severity of Mr. Cimpean's injuries and his claim to be an innocent party after he picked up his now wife at the King St. West club, where she worked as a dancer.

Ms. Asante's recollection of that night was also full of contradictions, Judge Bassel said.

"[They] all lead to my having some serious overall concerns about this case," the judge told an Old City Hall courtroom. "I'm left in a state of reasonable doubt as to what happened that night."

TrueHoop had more details of the trial, including some of Sam Cassell's testimony from last July. What's a guy to do when the courts can't help? Turn to the internet, apparently. Cimpean and Asante are determined not to let this incident simply disappear, going so far as to produce the following re-enactment (as well as additional descriptions of the night's events), narrated by a grizzled New York detective, no less. Make of it what you will, but it sounds like if these two had their stories this straight from the get-go the courts would have been a bit more friendly to their plight (Warning: the following includes some NSFW language):