Greetings, folks, Vince Mancini from FilmDrunk here to bring you this story tangentially-related to sweaty man-hugging, which is of course a passion of mine. The story concerns Tapout founder Charles “Mask” Lewis (center), who died in a car crash in March 2009. I’ve always had mixed feelings about Tapout, given that they’ve long helped sponsor fighters who wouldn’t have been able to make a living otherwise (which is great), but also promote the kind of cheesy, bro-y posturing that makes MMA look like pro wrestling, or an energy-drink commercial (not so great). In any case, Mask’s sister Carla recently filed a lawsuit, alleging that Mask’s partners in Tapout, the delightfully-named “Skyscrape” and “Punkass”, sold and/or gave away Mask’s cremated remains. Here’s TMZ‘s first report on the situation:
After Mask’s death, Carla claims she was approached by the co-founders of TapouT — men calling themselves Skyscrape and Punkass — who wanted to “borrow” Mask’s ashes and urn for a public memorial service.
Here’s where things get CRAZY — Carla says when she arrived to the memorial service, she noticed “various booths and tables” set up around the cathedral … one of which contained, “a large shoebox-size box containing several miniature vials that were on display.”
Carla says the vendor informed her, “each of the vials contained a small amount of the cremated remains of Mask, and were reserved for, and to be given to, ‘special people’ whose names were on a printed list.”
Carla believes somewhere between 50 to 100 vials were either “sold, given away, donated or otherwise distributed to several unknown persons.”
“I had no idea a guy in an afro wig and face paint named ‘Skyscrape’ could act so irresponsibly!” she added. Skyscrape and Punkass, meanwhile, deny ever selling the ashes. Meanwhile, the OC Register has a picture of the room in TapouT’s headquarter’s where Mask’s ashes had been stored, and man, get a load of this sh*t:
