Dennis RomeroNormally we would fear being sued by the lawyer-wielding stud behind the Girls Gone Wild video juggernaut for calling him “girl fighter extraordinaire.”
But in this case there doesn't seem to be any question about it. Joe Francis got down with a girl following a fender bender in Beverly Hills today, police tell the Weekly. And not in a good way.
Beverly Hills cops say that combat here was so mutual that …
” … neither party was desirous of arrest or prosecution,” in the words of BHPD Lt. Mark Rosen.
Wait, rewind. Big, buff player Joe Francis, who once sent a shirtless photo of himself to Gawker founder Nick Denton as part of his response to being called “Douche of the Decade” by the blog, got out of his Bentley to duke out with a woman on tony Rodeo Drive today?
Watch out, ladies, Joe has nails.
Lt. Mark Rosen:
They had a verbal altercation resulting from the collision, which then resulted in a physical confrontation with mutual combat.
Who ya gonna call? Joe Francis! He ain't afraid of no girls.
It all happened about 9:45 a.m. in the 400 block of North Rodeo Drive when Francis opened the door of his Bentley and the female motorist drove into it, resulting in what Rosen called “very minor damage” (which, for a Bentley, is likely a five-figure body shop bill).
Who was at fault? Cops aren't saying.
Whether “he opened the door into the path of a passing car” or she collided with a door that had long been open isn't clear, Rosen said.
One thing is, however: Macho Joe gets accused of getting into physical altercations with girls a lot, relatively speaking.
Consider Claire Hoffman's classic Los Angeles Times Magazine profile of Francis from 2006, which opens with this first paragraph:
Joe Francis, the founder of the “Girls Gone Wild” empire, is humiliating me. He has my face pressed against the hood of a car, my arms twisted hard behind my back. He's pushing himself against me, shouting: “This is what they did to me in Panama City!”
Really.
Or consider his arrest last summer by the LAPD for alleged false imprisonment. After a night of partying and getting three women into his limo, City Attorney's spokesman Frank Mateljan alleged this is what happened next with Joe:
During the ride, Mr. [Vagram] Gegdzhyan [Francis' “driver/bodyguard”) allegedly produced a Sheriff's badge, impersonating a law enforcement officer, and did not allow the women to get out of the limo.
The group was taken to Mr. Francis's gated residence where a physical altercation is alleged to have taken place between Mr. Francis and two of the women as he allegedly attempted to pull one of them away from the others. During the altercation, Mr. Francis allegedly grabbed one of the women by the throat and hair and pushed and slammed her head into the tile floor four times.
Really.
So, ladies: Know that when you meet Joe, he's a fighter not a lover.
[@dennisjromero / djromero@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]
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