On This Day in History: January 25

Eric Cantona kung fu kicks a Nazi

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If you don’t punch a Nazi, instead kung fu kicking that motherfucker, but at the time of said assault you didn’t know he was a fucking Nazi, is it still okay? I’m gonna say it’s okay. It’s the story of Eric Cantona, a football player for Manchester United, who’d had enough of one fan’s shit.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: January 25, 1995--

It was January 25, 1995. Man U was playing at Crystal Palace Football Club. People were not overly fond of Man U or Cantona, a Frenchman the press labeled Le Brat. Cantona’s temper caused him to be moved around from France to Leeds to Man U, where under the guidance of a Scottish coach named Alex Ferguson, Cantona flourished. In his five years at Man U the team won four Premiere League titles. He still had a major temper though.

Palace defender Richard Shaw had been told to stick to Cantona “like a rash.” After a series of unpunished tackles by Shaw in the first half, Cantona said to the ref, “No yellow cards, then?” Coach Ferguson was more blunt, asking the referee: “Why don’t you do your fucking job?” Pissed off at the lack of consequences for Palace misdeeds, Cantona took matters into his own hands—er, feet—early in the second half and literally booted Shaw “up the arse.” He was given a red card, kicked out of the game. Continues below …

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Cantona trudged off toward the tunnel, then this fucking Nazi got involved. Palace fan Matthew Simmons raced toward the front to yell at Cantona, “You dirty French bastard! Fuck off back to France you French motherfucker!”

“He just launched into this kung fu kick,” Palace player John Salako said of Cantona. “It was the most surreal, amazing thing I’d ever seen.” The kick caught Simmons in the side, and Cantona followed it up with a series of punches, because fuck that Nazi. Nazi? Yeah, fucking Nazi. Simmons, who was twenty at the time, was a member and rally attender of not one but two literal fascist parties in Britain: The British National Party, and the National Front. The founder of BNP was John Tyndale, a proud Nazi and white supremacist. Three years before the kung fu kick Simmons had also been convicted of a violent attempted robbery of a Sri Lankan man.

Cantona wasn’t the only one who got in shit for the incident at Crystal Palace. Simmons also went on trial for provoking the attack. After he was convicted, Simmons attacked the prosecutor, screaming he was innocent while holding the prosecutor in a headlock. A real quality individual all around.

For the assault Cantona received an eight-month ban from playing football and was sentenced to two weeks in prison, but this was overturned and changed to 120 hours of community service. He used that as an opportunity to coach children. In football, not kung fu.

Years later Cantona said of the incident, “I have one regret. I would’ve loved to have kicked him even harder.”

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