System of a Down’s Shavo Odadjian has cleared the air on what really happened in 2007 after the MTV Video Music Awards in Las Vegas when Mastodon’s Brent Hinds suffered significant physical injuries following an altercation.When it happened back in the 2000s, initial reports from the Las Vegas Weekly suggested that Odadjian was the person that Hinds had scuffled with, but over the years both Hinds and members of Mastodon have dispelled that initial report.Now, in speaking with Metal Hammer, Odadjian has shared his side of what exactly happened that night that landed Hinds in the hospital with a broken nose, two black eyes and a brain hemorrhage.What Shavo Odadjian Says Happened in 2007 Encounter With Brent Hinds“I never knocked out Brent Hinds,” Odadjian explained when asked about the incident. “That’s something that Brent was told by I-don’t-know-who.”The bassist recalls, “What happened was, we were in Las Vegas, outside Mandalay Bay after the MTV Music Awards, and I was with my friend, [rapper] Reverend William Burk. Brent Hinds comes out of a taxi and he’s like, ‘Bro, I love you!’ He was inebriated and swinging his shirt. He kept coming up to hug me. He was very in-my-face.”According to Odadjian, the encounter was intense but good natured. As he left and got into a taxi, he looked back and saw Hinds throw a punch at Burk that missed and Burk countering with a punch that he says was in “self-defense” that landed.”Brent fell and hit his head and got knocked out,” he recalls. ““I was five, six feet away.”Odadjian says security stopped his taxi after the incident, he was cuffed and taken to jail. “I said, ‘Check the fucking cameras [at the front of Mandalay Bay]! I did nothing!’ Once they did, the police came and let me go. I was there for, like, four hours,” he added.What Hinds + Members of Mastodon Have SaidIn a 2009 chat with Revolver (as shared by Blabbermouth), Hinds had seemingly moved off the idea of Odadjian’s involvement in the incident. He relayed that it was Burk that had done the damage. According to Hinds at the time, he had taken off his wet T-shirt, slung it around his head and accidentally had hit Burk.Speaking about the return punch from Burk, Hinds stated, “Shavo said it sounded like someone had hit a home run. I went into convulsions and seized out. Blood was coming out of my ears and mouth.”READ MORE: Mastodon Announce Departure of Brent HindsIn 2012, Hinds’ Mastodon bandmate Troy Sanders shared with Hysteria Magazine, “This is a giant piece of false information,” referring to reports of Odadjian being behind the attack. “Mastodon and System of a Down — we’re all friends. System of a Down was there, but they’re our friends. It was a different individual that this altercation went down with, so to set the record straight, to this day all of the System of a Down guys and Mastodon — we’re all friends. We have no problems with each other whatsoever.”That said, Sanders called it a “life-changing event.” There were a lot of question marks at that time and thankfully we prevailed from that whole period and created the music from Crack the Skye. We felt like that was a triumphant way to round out that two-year period of creating music and working together,” he added.Rock Star Family FeudsOh brother!Gallery Credit: Chad Childers, Loudwire
