March 12--What took place Saturday at The Squared Circle would be considered a "squash" match, according to wrestling parlance.
Lee Varon said he was in the kitchen of the Lincoln Park-area restaurant he co-owns with wife and pro wrestler Lisa Marie Varon when a waitress alerted him that a young man in the restaurant was acting odd. She told Lee Varon the man kept looking out the window and then went inside the women's bathroom. Just as Varon was exiting the kitchen to address the situation, the man forced his way into the kitchen.
Bad move.
"He said guys with guns were chasing him," Varon said Wednesday over the phone. "He was pretty combative with me. I felt like he was going for a weapon -- he kept digging in his pants -- and that's when I picked him up. I kept saying, 'I'm going to put you back down but you need to stop digging into your pants or we're going to have a problem.' He tried to go back into his pants, and that's when I slammed him against the shelving unit on the wall."
The man, listed at 5-foot-5, 115 pounds, according to the police report, clearly was unfamiliar with the wrestling-themed pizza and gourmet burgers restaurant. If he was, he would have known the 6-foot-2, 260 pound Varon runs the place and stayed far away.
Varon, a former bouncer in Louisville and San Bernardino, Calif., said he realized the man had a gun when he heard metal on metal during the slam against the shelving unit and told the other cook in the kitchen to pull the gun out of his pants, which he did.
"He was head-butting me and trying to bite and scratch me, which is why I took him down," Varon said. "It was easier to lay on him. I realized at that moment I need to do more cardio. I'm built for speed, not distance. But at no point did I feel like I was losing."
Video of the altercation can be found at tmz.com -- which first reported the incident -- and shows Varon in complete control. Varon guessed 19th District police arrived around five minutes after they were called and said he overheard the man tell police he had robbed a drug dealer and run into the restaurant to hide.
Police identified the man as 18-year-old Arnez Harper and charged him with possession of a controlled substance, battery/makes physical contact, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and aggravated unlawful use of a weapon. Harper is being held at Cook County Jail.
Lisa Marie Varon has been living in California in recent months and was not on hand Saturday. The two-year-old restaurant was recently listed for sale.
"I had zero sympathy for the guy," Lee Varon said. "There could have been a shootout in the restaurant because of him. If I wasn't so concerned about holding his hands because he may have another weapon, I would have given him the business."
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