Video proves Chad Kelly didn't start the fight, according to his lawyer

Chad Kelly's bar fight in Buffalo, N.Y. over the weekend -- ya know, the one where he allegedly punched a bouncer, threatened to spray the place with an AK-47 and resisted police officers -- wasn't his fault. The recently-signed Ole Miss quarterback transfer was just defending himself.

So claims his lawyer, who says a cell phone video of the incident released by Deadspin on Monday proves his client wasn't at fault.

"I think that someone put their hands out to Chad first and for a very brief period of time, a period of five or six seconds, it appears Chad was trying to defend himself while he was being assaulted," Thomas J. Eonnanu said, according to Hugh Kellenberger. "... This is a very short brief struggle that as we all can see from the video Chad didn't start and thankfully no one was injured."

Based on the video, there may be some legitimacy to that claim. Despite being just 35 seconds long and shot vertically so it has those annoying black side panels (for the love of God, people, do the world a favor and turn your phone horizontal before you hit record), the video seems to give a pretty good look of the fight. Kelly is shown arguing with a bouncer outside of the bar (the police report claims he had just been kicked out). The bouncer pushes Kelly, Kelly shoves him back and then the bouncer appears to throw a punch. Kelly can be seen trading punches and kicks amid the ensuing scuffle before being hauled off across the street by a couple of buddies.

The video has no record of Kelly's alleged threat to "go to my car and get my AK-47 and spray this place," but it's possible that it was either inaudible or issued outside of that 35-second timeframe.

The problem is, according to the person that sent this into Deadspin, the video doesn't actually show the beginning of the fight:

He was struck in the face and was bloodied prior to the video being taken. Apparently, he spit in the bouncers face and spit some blood at him.

You can hear someone in the video say "Bro, you're spitting fucking blood everywhere," so it would appear that claim is true. Which means we're no closer to knowing who actually started the fight.

But even if it is true that Kelly was simply defending himself, we're still left with some troubling questions. What did he do to get thrown out of the bar? Did he threaten to shoot the place up? Why did he allegedly struggle with police officers who pulled his truck over minutes later?

Those are questions that Hugh Freeze is no doubt asking, and the answers will probably decide whether Kelly stays on his new team.