Fabio has volunteered more details of his restaurant encounter with George Clooney that almost escalated into fisticuffs, and since he’s doing the telling Clooney comes off as a royal ass. He says that Clooney was wasted and that he called the woman that he thought was taking pictures of him that night at “fat cow,” which is why Fabio jumped to her defense. Fabio says he was having a charity dinner and that the woman Clooney suspected of taking his picture didn’t even recognize the former ER star. He also doesn’t hasten to add how much bigger he is than Clooney and repeats his publicists’ claim that he could have kicked his ass if he wanted to.

I assumed that management stepped in and separated the two, but Fabio says that George ran out of the restaurant like a scared little girl!

“I was doing a charity for the 11-99 Foundation, which benefits the widows and children of officers killed in the line of duty,” says Fabio of the infamous Nov. 2 dinner at Madeo. “I had dinner with six women and a photographer woman and we were just having fun, having dinner and taking pictures. All of a sudden one of the ladies said to me, ‘There is this gentleman a few tables behind you that keeps insulting me, keeps giving me the finger.’ She’s like, ‘This gentleman behind you called me a fat cow.’”

“So I turn and it was him,” Fabio says of Clooney. “He was drunk and thought people were taking pictures of him. So I went to the table and explained to him that we were having a charity dinner and I said, ‘You’re more than welcome to come to my table and see if there was a picture of you.’ I apologized and he started being rude so I put him in his place. After I put him in his place — you know I’m three times his size — he got a little scared. I went back to my table and as soon as I sit down he paid his bill, got up and he started insulting the girls. He called the women names. At that point I lost my temper. I went after him and he ran out of the restaurant.”

“He has no class,” Fabio tells OK!. “You have to be a low-class, scumbag to start calling a woman a name. If you’re a man, you should never. You should be a gentleman. These women were with me and as a man I defend them. He was lucky he ran out of the restaurant. He’s not even half a man.”

[From OK! Magazine]

You guys were ripping on me when I said that Fabio looks hotter than aging Clooney, but I stand by my somewhat-questionable assessment, especially in light of Fabio’s diss to George in his latest comments. I know he only stands to help his failing career, but that’s cool that he’s being so open and obnoxious about it. Maybe it did go down that way, but I suspect the woman either actually was taking picture of Clooney, or he legitimately suspected her of it, since she was a professional photographer and probably had some high-end equipment.

Still, it’s incredibly mean and not that creative to call someone a “fat cow,” when there are so many other put-downs that would do. I imagine George running out of the restaurant waving his hands and screaming as a stoic Fabio stands there, looking smug, but he probably just paid the check and left, not wanting to deal with the situation. Clooney is likely never to comment on this, but I hope it turns into a back and forth PR war, with Clooney issuing his own snotty statement to counter Fabio’s. Then we’ll have something to whisper about on the rare occasion they show up at the same event, glaring at each other from across the room like Maggie from the Simpsons and that baby with the unibrow.

George Clooney was out to dinner with his new cocktail waitress girlfriend and Fear Factor winner, Sarah Larson, in L.A. last Friday. 48 year Italian model Fabio was at the next table with a group of women, and one of them started taking pictures. Clooney got all upset thinking they were taking pictures of him, and Fabio told him not to be a diva. The two started arguing, then Clooney got up, said the F word and started pushing Fabio. Since Fabio is 6′3″ tall and Clooney is 5′11″ it could have ended badly for George:

According to numerous eyewitnesses, Clooney, assuming the woman was taking snaps of him, asked her to stop - prompting Fabio to explain that the shots were of his group, not Clooney, and to tell the superstar, “Stop being a diva.” Clooney started arguing back, and he and Fabio then got into a shoving match. “The waiters broke it up before it got out of hand,” a witness told In Touch. Clooney then paid his check and left before finishing his meal. According to another In Touch witness, Ron Marotto, “George looked annoyed when Fabio went to his table. George stood up, dropped the F-bomb and then went to push him . . . George was drinking . . . He wasn’t drunk, but he certainly wasn’t stone sober, either.” Fabio’s manager told the magazine, “George is lucky he didn’t end up in the ER.” Clooney’s rep declined to comment to Page Six.

[From PageSix via WeSmirch]

I love how Fabio’s rep says Clooney could have ended up in the ER, har har. In Touch sheds more light onto why Clooney may have been suspicious of the woman taking pictures - she was a professional photographer and Clooney probably recognized her high end equipment. Fabio is also an AV enthusiast, and Wikipedia quotes him as telling Stuff Magazine this year that he’s into gadgets.

As for Fabio’s career, he hasn’t really become the action hero he was hoping and has had to settle for dabbling in different fields. He was wildly successful with a line of women’s outerwear he designed for Sam’s Clubs in 2003, and has done plenty of TV talkshow and magazine interviews. Maybe this amusing fight with Clooney will help raise his profile a bit. Fabio certainly comes off as the less aggressive party in reports of the incident.

Fabio is shown on 9/4/07, thanks to WENN. Clooney is shown on 10/31/07 filming Burn After Reading, thanks to Splash News. 48 year-old Fabio still looks hot to me. Clooney is 46, and although he’s at a disadvantage in this photo because he’s sporting that beard and outfit for a role, I have to declare Fabio the winner in the looks department.