Brazilian mayoral candidate attacks opponent with chair during debate

Brazilian politics strikes again, after a WWE match somehow broke out in a mayoral debate. Six candidates were duking it out to win the São Paulo public’s approval, but it was right-wing influencer Pablo Marçal and anti-crime TV presenter José Luiz Datena who got ready to rumble after their pre-existing feud boiled over into furniture-based violence. In a previous debate, Marçal made it personal by bringing up a 2019 sexual harassment allegation a female colleague had made against Datena. The allegations were later dropped, and bringing them up again was apparently a sore point, with the two nearly coming to blows. So, obviously, Marçal brought it up again, this time taunting Datena. ‘You crossed the debate stage recently to slap me… you’re not even man enough to do that.’

He was very much mistaken. Datena grabbed a sturdy-looking chair and made a fierce, firm, gravity assisted rebuttal. As he rained down blows upon Marçal’s head, state-owned channel TV Cultura quickly cut to commercial. Post debate polling shows that Datena’s campaign has been given a small boost following his decision to go upside his opponent’s head with a chair, on the grounds that no one knew he was even running.