It was more like a baseball brawl than a fight. In other words, the dustup between Fox Sports Detroit’s Tigers announcers was overblown and not nearly as violent as reported, one of the men involved claims several months later.
On Sept. 4, Rod Allen and Mario Impemba got into a skirmish, ending their 16-year run together. Allen spoke about the incident for the first time on the “Michigan Matters” show on WWJ-TV and said more was made out of the situation, though he has yet to speak to Impemba about what happened since.
“You know, it’s funny that you say that because I’ve thought that over and over and over and I really can’t come up with anything differently that I would have done,” said Allen, who had been paired with Impemba since 2002. “We had a bad day, there’s no doubt about that. I didn’t have a good day, he did not have a good day as well, and because of that, it was an argument. There was no choking, there was no fighting, there was no chasing down the hallway.
“Have you ever seen a baseball brawl where they open up the fences and both teams come running out and then they all merge in the infield? And there’s just a lot of talking and pushing and shoving? That’s basically what happened to us on Sept. 4,” Allen added. “There was some, not much, pushing but more verbal and somehow, someway, it turned into me chasing him down a hallway and choking him from behind and that’s what the media got ahold of and that’s what went national and I think that’s why both of us got fired.”
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