An insane brawl broke out between the Philippines and Australia during a basketball match in the FIBA Asia World Cup qualifiers.

Discuss the Philippines-Australia fight in this forum thread or this one

With about four minutes remaining in the third quarter and Australia comfortably ahead by nearly 30 points, Roger Ray Pogoy  drove the lane and his elbow made contact with Australian guard Chris Goulding‘s face. No foul was called, Pogoy passed the ball off and play continued.

From the full video, it looks as if Pogoy then forcibly rammed into Goulding, who seemed ready to take on the hit. The force of which knocked Goulding down. That’s when Aussie player Daniel Kickert took exception and blindsided Pogoy with a left forearm that laid Pogoy out.

A second angle on the Kickert elbow. Yikes #Boomers pic.twitter.com/jkx8IlPVo0

— Ricky Mangidis (@rickm18) July 2, 2018

And that’s when the match hit the gas. From there, all chaos broke out. Players swarmed. Fists and kicks were flying. Former NBA’er Andray Blatche and Jayson Castro were the first Filipino players to go after Kickert for blindsiding Pogoy.

Castro, a small guard ran and jumped up to try and punch Kickert in the face as players rumbled. NBA player Thon Maker threw his whole (thin) body into the fray and later ran and did a flying kick at Terrence Romeo, a player a foot shorter than him (just a fact). Chairs were thrown. Several Filipino players were enraged as they chased Kickert all around as chaos spilled outside the basketball court. Newly-retired Andrew Bogut replied to a photo on Twitter of what looks to be an official punching Rickert.

As the fight seemed to dissipate, players ran back to the the basket where Australian guard Nathan Sobey was mobbed, trapped by a chair, and was being punched multiple times while he laid on the ground.

The officials first tried to break up the melee, but saw that it quickly got out of hand. They’re normal-sized humans so they didn’t bet on themselves being able to separate the two teams and smartly walked away.  If you want to bet on yourself, you can using this 888 ladies promo code, but I recommend staying away from trying to step in front of angry, large professional athletes.

After everything settled down (relatively), the officials eventually got together, looked at the replays to figure out the punishment while Philippine players reportedly “posed for selfies in bizarre scenes given they embarrassed the game with their absurdly violent behavior.”

My first exposure to the fight turned out to be one that edited out Kickert’s punch, so if you saw that, it’s easy to say that team Philippines overreacted. After seeing Kickert’s actions, I don’t blame the Philippines for coming to the defense of their players, but there comes a point where principle and pride become too much, and are then viewed as the villains no matter what started it. As is stands, now there’s equally-questionable actions on both sides that muddles who was right and who was wrong.