He was foundnot guilty in December of choking and assaulting the 33-year-old woman,telling reporters afterwards he was relieved “the truth is out there,finally”.
“It’s been a big cost to me,it’s been a big setback in my life,” he said at the time. “But,we’ve all got our struggles in life. This is my one currently,so it’s up to me now to regroup and get back to my normal life. I can finally leave this all behind.”
While he was cleared,there has been concern at Fox Sports about his behaviour for some time and the incident on Saturday night may be one blow too many.
Kent is close friends with his boss,Fox Sports executive Steve Crawley,who backed him during his court case last year,but it was unclear on Monday what his future,if any,would be at the subscription television network and theDaily Telegraph,with both not returning calls.
Instead,it’s Kent’s tendency towards aggression that has come back to bite him.
His presence on television affords him minor celebrity status in Sydney,where rugby league is king,and previous vision spread on social media has demonstrated that he has been baited while out in public,as he claimed to have been on Saturday night.
In one clip,which was posted by mixed martial arts fighter Tai “Bam Bam” Tuivasa and emerged after he was exonerated last December,Kent was on the receiving end of a horrific slur in a pub from an unknown man,who snarled at him:“I’ll smack the f--- out of ya”.
Kent did not respond to the abuse in that vision but in another video,shot in 2022 and seen by this masthead,he was held back by a friend from approaching a man in a bar. “Don’t film this,” Kent said in that footage. “Well,don’t be a c--- … don’t be a f---wit,” the man replied. Kent was ultimately talked into cooling off on that occasion.
He did not show the same restraint on the weekend in Rozelle.
Kent,who has trained in the past with legendary boxing trainer Johnny Lewis and wrote a biography on him,was visited at home on Monday by a series of friends. They included Elias,who played in the 1980s and 1990s with six Sydney clubs and served several stints in prison including for shooting a man and for drug offences. Elias was also charged over $5500 in bets he placed on the North Queensland Cowboys to score first against Canterbury in the infamous match between the two sides in 2010,but he was later found not guilty. His brother George,who is a lawyer,represented Kent in court last year.
Another to turn up at Kent’s house was former Olympic boxer Rick Timperi,who competed for Australia at the 1992 Games in Barcelona and in 1996 in Atlanta.
Once a promising young league player who made one first-grade appearance for Parramatta in 1989,Kent had a notable stoush with former Australian international Mark Geyer while they were playing in the Central Coast competition in 1994 for Ourimbah and Umina respectively.
Upset at one of the young journalist’s columns,Geyer made his fury clear as their two teams took the field to play each other,barking at him “you’re f---ing dead”,before pursuing and eventually launching at Kent during the game.
“It wasn’t a tackle ...[it] was a little high and a little late,[an] elbow behind the ear,” Kent told Fox’s Matty Johns podcast about Geyer’s retribution,which triggered a brawl and them both being sent off.
He went on to carve out a career as one of the most prominent faces in Australian sports media,firstly at theSun-Herald andThe Sydney Morning Herald and then News Corp.
He has been very well-connected with some of the most influential figures in rugby league,among them coach Ricky Stuart and the late Immortal Bob Fulton,and is known for his delivery of unwavering opinion.
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