A Deep Dive Into the Double Seven Royal Rumble

You thought you knew the entire story of the Royal Rumble at Double Seven, but it turns out that there is oh so much more. And now Vanity Fair does a deeeeeep dive into the brawl to rule them all, when American hero Adam Hock managed to knock out four members of the European .0001% — who fashion themselves as New York scenesters — after the Fab Four had allegedly hassled Hock's women and tried to steal his bottle of vodka. Allegedly.

There are still competing stories about who started what and if Hock only starting throwing haymakers after Prince Pierre Casiraghi, Vladimir Roitfeld, Stavros Niarchos III, and Diego Marroquinhe had come after him first, including that oh so famous bottle of Grey Goose that managed to bruise Hock's shoulder.

The Vanity Fair author was shown two video tapes of the incident. From the first tape:

Eleven seconds after two a.m., according to the video time stamp, Hock hits Marroquin. Ten seconds later, Roitfeld goes down. Twelve seconds after that, Casiraghi is hit and reels backward into a low, jagged-edged wood table. When Niarchos walks up to Hock he is immediately hit. By 2:03, it's over.

But then a few days later an enhanced broadcast of the footage emerges, showing something different than the first time:

[A]n arm? a bottle?—appearing to swing down toward Hock's head from behind, and a clip from Camera 8, near the D.J. booth, in which Hock appears to bend forward, as if looking for some­thing (his coat?). A crowd surges toward him—it's hard to imagine he's not being jostled—and then he springs up and hits Casiraghi so hard he is airborne. A few seconds later, Niarchos cuts swiftly through the crowd toward Hock, arm extended.

Could that have been the bottle? We will probably never know, because since the incident, Hock has plead no contest to a minor charge and the competing groups are close to settling their various civil lawsuits. Most importantly, Double Seven has closed, with the brawl having chased away so many of the well heeled customers who no longer wanted to spend money in a place known more for fighting than fun.
· A Very Exclusive Brawl [Vanity Fair]
· Double Seven Coverage [~ENY~]

Double Seven

63 Gansevoort St., New York, NY