Professional Kickboxer Picks Fight With Teenage Girl — Loses & Promptly Gets Arrested
This probably wasn't the reaction that he was expecting.
Twitter / Per Grunditz / Shutterstock There are rare moments on the internet where the entire world is unified in watching a scene play out with second-hand embarrassment.
On December 28, 2022, that’s exactly what occurred when a couple of Twitter users had a squabble on the platform after 36-year-old professional kickboxer Andrew Tate picked a fight with a 19-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg. However no one knew this Twitter fight would result in Andrew Tate's arrest in Romania.
Andrew Tate and Greta Thunberg's Twitter fight captivated the Internet.
Tate, 36-year-old former professional kickboxer turned internet microcelebrity, was formerly banned from nearly every social media platform on the planet until Tesla CEO Elon Musk grabbed hold of Twitter and unbanned the grown adult despite his toxic views.
Since then, he’s decided to use his time wisely by purchasing a Twitter Blue subscription for the Verified Check mark that he oh-so-preciously desired and started trouble with a young woman that seems to live in every conservative’s mind rent-free: Greta Thunberg.
Completely unprovoked and unasked, Tate tweeted to Thunberg, “Hello @GretaThunberg. I have 33 cars. My Bugatti has a w16 8.0L quad turbo. My TWO Ferrari 812 competizione have 6.5L v12s. This is just the start. Please provide your email address so I can send a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions.”
In an attempt to get a rise out of the teen, who became famous after her speech on climate change at the UN on September 23, 2019, what he got instead, was humbled.
In response to the lame, braggadocious list of cars he uses to compensate for something, Thunberg tweeted back “yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalld--kenergy@getalife.com.”
The implication here, although lost on some folk who would continue to try and bash a teenager, is that Tate has a small phallus despite his various, desperate attempts to come off as an “alpha” male — also adding that he needs to work towards a more fulfilling life outside of bullying a teenage girl on social media and bragging about cars as a grown man.
The tweet seen worldwide has received over 2.7 million likes, 450,000 retweets, and — thanks to the implementation of Musk’s new features on the platform — has been viewed over 180 million times.
“How dare you?!” Tate answered in reply, believing himself clever for referencing the same speech that made Thunberg famous while he was being laughed at by everyone else on the platform.
Tate’s second response was a cringe 2-minute video where he attempted to roast her again.
“Thank you for confirming via your email address that you have a small p--is @GretaThunberg,” he wrote in the tweet. “The world was curious. And I do agree you should get a life.”
Attached to the tweet was a 2-minute video where Tate sits in a Versace robe and puffs on a cigar while he admits he doesn’t believe in the climate crisis and complains about Twitter bots.
After exhaling the smoke from his cigar for the first — and last — time, he jokes that he’s “releasing some greenhouse gases.”
Later on in the video, he asks someone off-camera to bring him some pizza and “make sure that these boxes are not recycled.”
The rest of the time, he complains about the success Thunberg’s tweet received and how he believes it was the result of a “bot farm,” although I’ve never seen a Twitter bot farm receive nearly 3 million likes.
He also, once again, tries to make the joke that Thunberg’s real email address is the one she wrote and claims that she has male genitalia while insulting her.
Needless to say, the video was very cringey, and the entire world unified for a second time to cringe with embarrassment after viewing it.
The pizza box in Tate's video led to his arrest by Romanian police.
A mere 24 hours after Tate published the embarrassing Twitter video directed at Thunberg, videos from local news segments in Romania showed that Tate and his brother Tristan Tate had been arrested by Romanian authorities.
Sources close to the Romanian news site Gândul confirmed that the authorities were simply waiting to execute the operation once they were sure Andrew was in the country — something that the pizza box confirmed.
"Jerry's Pizza," the pizza chain that supplied Andrew with his dinner that night, is a local Romanian chain and could have been enough confirmation for the Romanian authorities to execute their warrant.
However, this has not been confirmed by the Bucharest Organized Crime Brigade or the Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism — the two groups involved in Andrew's takedown.
According to a press release from the Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism in Romania, five homes were raided in connection to an investigation dealing with human trafficking, an organized crime group and rape.
The four suspects that were detained — including the Tate brothers — would be held for 24 hours while they were questioned by the authorities in connection to the crimes.
According to live updates from Gândul, prosecutors have asked the Romanian courts to allow them 30 more days of detention for the suspects for further questioning, but as the time for their 24-hour hold draws near, a ruling has yet to be given.
Despite the reports that confirm Andrew is still in jail, his fans are convinced that he's been let free.
All over Twitter, misinformation has been spreading as old clips have started to resurface alongside claims that Andrew and his brother were freed by the authorities because they had nothing to pin on him.
Andrew, it would seem, was able to maintain possession of some kind of device that allows him to post on social media while he's in detention because he issued a tweet at 5:30 AM on December 30, 2022, saying that "The Matrix sent their agents."
"The Matrix" is a concept that Andrew uses to convince his fans that they are living in some kind of simulation that is oppressing them and that he holds the answers to help them out of it despite "the matrix's" best efforts to keep him silent.
Tweets cropped up claiming that "the matrix" failed to keep him silent or that they unjustly arrested him were all over the place from devoted fans who wished to see their idol freed.
An old clip from August 2022 of Andrew being interviewed by Tucker Carlson grew in popularity once again as it was posted alongside claims that he was free, despite proof that he is still in police custody.
In the interview, Carlson asks Andrew about a previous arrest that was made in connection to a separate human trafficking incident.
Andrew claims that he was not "arrested," but instead was "swatted" — an incident that happens when someone incorrectly informs the authorities that an internet celebrity is involved in a crime or is committing a crime like illegal possession of guns or drugs or has a hostage.
He claims that during the previous arrest, he was simply let go after 45 minutes after signing some paperwork and confirming that there was nothing going on.
This time, however, it seems like Andrew might be going away for much longer than 45 minutes if the Romanian authorities have their way.
At the time of writing, neither Andrew nor his brother have been formally charged with any crimes.
Maybe next time, Tate will think twice before starting a fight with a teenager on Twitter.
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Keep up with his rants about current events on his Twitter.