Zito is a genuine tough guy a real-life ex-con Hell's Angel.
Zito was van Damme's bodyguard at one point
You don't fuck with Chuck
Chuck Zito has made fear, charm, and honesty work to his advantage. His career has progressed from being a bodyguard for Hollywood’s upper crust….to becoming a Hollywood stunt man and actor in his own right…and finally to beating up some of Hollywood’s top stars.
The deed he’s most famous for was when he decked Belgian action hero Jean-Claude Van Damme at a Manhattan strip club in February, 1998.
"The man who calls himself The Muscles from Brussels went down like a sack of potatoes and curled up in the fetal position after taking a blow from his former bodyguard," read an article in The Globe. "This ain’t the movies!" Zito reportedly shouted as Van Damme lay in a heap, "This is the street, and I own the street!"
"[Van Damme] is just a very arrogant and disrespectful person," Zito told the New York Post, whose front-page headline was JEAN-CLAUDE VAN SLAMMED! "He was saying, ‘Chuck Zito doesn’t have any heart.’ There are people who will take that kind of abuse. I am not one of them," claimed the man who came to be known as "The Van-Damminator."
Although one news account says Zito knocked out actor Gary "I’m Ugly" Busey, Chuck tells me he only "bitch-slapped" him. "He’s just another guy who’s disrespectful. He just got stupid and jumped in my face, so I bitch-slapped him because he had a plate in his head. I said, ‘I bitch-slapped you like a girl.’…Maybe that’s why I don’t get so much work—I’m known for cracking a few celebrities," he laughs.
