Kurt Thomas in Mission Valley Bar Scuffle : Jury Deliberates on Fight Involving Gymnast

Jury deliberations began Wednesday in the case of a San Diego State University football player who punched world-class gymnast Kurt Thomas at a Mission Valley bar.

Michael Damien Wilder, 22, a varsity safety entering his senior year at SDSU, was charged with misdemeanor battery against Thomas, 30, and fellow gymnast Keith Campbell, 24.

Wilder maintained that it was Thomas who started the fight, which occurred about 12:45 a.m. Jan. 10 in a restroom at Confetti. Thomas was hospitalized and received 16 stitches in his cheek for injuries suffered in the altercation. At the time of the fight, Thomas was in San Diego to serve as a commentator during television coverage of the college cheerleading championships.

In closing arguments in the Municipal Court trial, Albert Arena, prosecuting the case for the San Diego city attorney’s office, outlined a scene in which Wilder, who he described as “a bully,” punched Thomas and Campbell to gain notoriety. He said Wilder, who is 6 feet tall and weighs 180 pounds, verbally abused the 5-foot-11, 160-pound Campbell in a downstairs restroom at Confetti. He said Thomas, who is 5-foot-5 and 140 pounds, tried to break up the argument. Then Wilder recognized Thomas and punched him in the left cheek. When Thomas fell back stunned, Campbell grabbed Wilder around the waist and Wilder hit him in the head and ribs. Four days later, Campbell complained of sore ribs but was not treated.

“For no reason, unprovoked, unwarranted and without fear for his own safety, the defendant struck Kurt Thomas,” Arena said. “That’s the people’s case in a nutshell.”

Arena said Thomas would not have engaged in a fight when he had several television appearances the next day and a career dependent on a clean-cut image.

“Kurt Thomas had absolutely nothing to gain by fighting and absolutely everything to lose,” Arena said.

In an attempt to make the fight look like a friendly scuffle, Wilder told a police officer that he knew Thomas, Arena said.

“I never touched him,” Thomas said Tuesday. “He hit me and I went down. I told him he was going to pay for this.”

Campbell, a gymnast in Thomas’ touring company, said, “I was just trying to keep the peace between them.”

Wilder was convicted of battery in a similar incident two years ago. A police report shows that at a party in December, 1983, Wilder picked a fight with James Schabarum, another SDSU student, and fractured his cheekbone. In May, 1984, Wilder was sentenced to a day of confinement, a fine and three years probation.

Wilder’s attorney, Pierre Pfeffer, argued that Thomas threw the first punch. He said Wilder was leaving the crowded restroom when Campbell blocked his way, and when Campbell refused to move, a shouting match began. Thomas emerged from a bathroom stall, rushed Wilder, punched him in the neck and pinned him against the wall, Pfeffer said. Wilder then punched Thomas three times in the head in self-defense and walked out of the bathroom without touching Campbell, he said.

Pfeffer said Thomas’ clean-cut image caused Thomas to claim that it was Wilder who started the fight and that he merely got hit. Actually, Thomas was the one who fought with Wilder, the defense attorney said, and Campbell only started the shouting match. “If you switch the players around, it starts making sense,” he said. Wilder testified that Thomas grabbed him around the waist and that he never touched Campbell.

Pfeffer said Thomas was slightly drunk from the Long Island iced teas he drank that night and that he attacked Wilder after the shouting started to defend his friend and employee. “If there was any fighting to be done, the boss was going to do it,” Pfeffer said. “I don’t think Kurt Thomas stands back and lets his employees get into a fracas without playing a part.”

For the jury to find Wilder guilty, it must agree beyond a reasonable doubt that Wilder willfully used force against another and was not defending himself.

Thomas became an Olympic favorite after he won two NCAA all-around gymnastics championships for Indiana State University and won a gold medal in floor exercises at the world championships in Strasbourg, France, in 1978. But the 1980 U.S.-led boycott of the games to protest the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan denied Thomas a chance to compete in the Moscow Olympics.

His trademark, the much-copied “Thomas Flair,” is a series of whirling, mid-air scissors on the pommel horse that he introduced in 1975.

Thomas turned professional in 1980 and has toured, done television commentary and run a summer camp. He performed at Sea World in San Diego in the summers of 1984 and 1985.