Punches over a… chair at Vasilis Karras’ concert

The incident between patrons that witnesses say lasted a minute blew up on Greek social media

Vasilis Kara’s sold out performance last Friday, 3 June, in Melbourne was all over Greek media, not only because of its huge success but because of an incident that broke out between two patrons.

While the famous Greek singer was performing on stage two groups of friends started arguing to the point that things got physical.

Vasilis Karas stopped singing and yelled at them to stop fighting from the microphone.

“Come on you guys. Mercy!,” he said in Greek, frustrated.

A few days after the incident, Greek media started reporting on the altercation using sensationalist titles the likes of “Wild fight at Karas’ gig in Australia”, “Karas’ stage turned into a ring in Melbourne,” “Punches with background music at Karas’ gig” and so on. The sensationalist headlines of the incident overstated what actually occurred, which was captured by video, nevertheless Greek social media ‘blew up’ making the altercation sound much bigger than it was.

According to venue owner of Kinisi at Trak, Kostas Tangalakis 15 journalists called him from Greece to find out more about the fight.

“It all started between two groups sitting at the front row tables. We are not talking kids but 50-year-olds,” he told Neos Kosmos.

“They are family-men, well-known in the Greek community. One group was from Melbourne and the other was down from Sydney mainly for the Kambosos boxing fight. There was a misunderstanding… some were also more inebriated and what happened, happened.”

Surprised by the publicity the incident got in Greece, Mr Tangalakis said that he can’t comprehend how a moment like that can be more newsworthy than the war in Ukraine or Erdogan’s most recent threats against Greece.

“A guy from one group pushed a chair, a guy from another group got angry, they fell-out. To be honest, they did get physical, some slaps and punches were exchanged for less than a minute but the swift reaction of the security personnel and waiters had them all kicked out immediately.”

As Mr Tangalakis further explained, the whole incident took place while Vasilis Karras was singing ‘Den Pao Pouthena, Edo tha Meino’ which he had to interrupt to tell the groups to stop. The performance soon resumed without without it affecting the general good mood on the night.

“We didn’t even need the police. It all ended pretty much as soon as it started,” he said, adding that both groups called him later on to apologise for their out-of-line behaviour.

Vasilis Karras will be performing again on Saturday 11 June at Kinisi at Trak. All tickets have been sold out.