Amateur Russian Hockey Player Drills Ref with Stick for Giving Him a Penalty

Things got ugly in Putin's America Russia as an amateur hockey game went haywire and a stick-up beating was handed down to referee Nikita Tikhonov. Or, as the Sovsports.ru headline reads after running it through Google Translate:

A player with a club beat arbitrator did not agree with the removal of (video).

Reporter Dmitry Ponomarenko breaks it down in spectacular fashion.

(Yes, we know a lot of it is lost in translation, but it still makes the melee that much more of a literary nesting doll.)

"This in our hockey has never been! Fights between players - as they want. Sometimes coaches and engage in fights. But the player has started purposefully beat the judge - this has never happened before.

The incident took place in Buryatia. At one of the local amateur league matches between the teams 'Armeec' and 'Dorojnik' the player does not agree with the fact that the referee gave him a 10-minute penalty. By the way, for physical contact with the referee. And with the words 'What are you gone crazy? You amb *** in what?' 'I began beating him with a club of judges. All this was recorded on a video camera fixed to the helmet from the referee …'"

We aren't making light of the violence, as Tikhonov—and one other official, as best we can tell from the translation—did suffer multiple injuries for the crime of penalizing a player (No. 6), telling him to leave the ice, and asking him to please calm down and act like an adult when he refused. The player will obviously be punished and the team will likely be disqualified for his "hooliganism."

Amateur Russian hockey is frightening.

h/t Reddit