Winnipeg — Legal wrangling may have brought plans for this month's Battle of the Hockey Gladiators to an abrupt halt Tuesday, but would-be combatant Andy Ristau is refusing to let months of stepped up training go to waste.
"Now that I'm in top notch shape I guess I'll just hang around the beach the rest of the summer," Ristau said with a laugh after learning the pay-per-view hockey-fighting tournament won't go ahead as planned Aug. 20-21.
But Ristau expressed hope dejected promoters will succeed in their goal to relocate the event to another "friendlier city" in Canada or the United States at a later date.
"It's unfortunate the whole police thing, or the law, had to get involved," said Ristau, a 43-year-old Winnipeg native who played in the WHL and the AHL, with stints in the CHL and UHL.
"I just think it's the first time somebody's having this kind of an event and I don't think they know what category to put it in, so they think the best thing is not to let it go on."
Ristau was to be one of 32 former NHL, semi-pro, university and junior hockey tough guys pairing off at centre ice for a series of short punching matches. Judges would award points based on number of punches thrown and landed, quality of punches, showmanship, crowd response and control of the fight.
But Hockey Gladiators president Darryl Wolski and director operations Ray Walker said they would not proceed as planned because Winnipeg Police exerted "a great deal of pressure" on Winnipeg Enterprises Corp., which oversees the Winnipeg Arena where the event was to be held.
At issue is whether the unique event violates the Criminal Code, which prohibits prize fighting.
The dejected pair declined interview requests, but in a release said they will continue to work to find a home for the event they invented last year.
"Rather than put our participants at risk of a charge, we're going to postpone Hockey Gladiators until we can secure a new location," Wolski said in a release.
The status of the event was first called into serious question last Friday, when Winnipeg Police said they consider it illegal and would have officers on hand to investigate if it went ahead. Supt. Stan Tataryn denied at the time that any pressure was being exerted.
The Criminal Code defines an illegal prize fight as an encounter with fists or hands between two people who specifically meet to fight and who are not sanctioned by a boxing association.
Walker has called the event "wrestling on ice, a TV production staged with some of hockey's most colourful characters." There is technically no prize for the winner, but competitors are paid "talent fees" that increase as they live to fight another round.
Plans to hold the event in Winnipeg finally collapsed Tuesday when Walker and Wolski could not give adequate assurances to Winnipeg Enterprises that the event was legal.
"I would have been fine with them working through programming changes right up until the moment we opened the doors so long as when we opened the doors we knew with some confidence the event was not going to contravene local law," said corporation president Kevin Donnelly.
"They elected not to go through that process, not to continue to invest time and money and effort into the process for an event here."
This setback is just the latest promoters have faced in recent weeks.
Walker and Wolski scrambled to move the tournament to Winnipeg earlier this summer after a change in the ownership and planned renovations at the Target Center in Minneapolis created headaches with the original venue.
More than 2,100 tickets had been sold in Winnipeg and will now be fully refunded, said Donnelly.
Ristau, meanwhile, plans to continue his training.
"Even a year, I'll be a year older, Oh my God, but if they have it in the near future . . . I've got nothing but time," said Ristau.
"I could wait, I think I'd still want to go in it."
