The unrepentant Jets fan who infamously punched a female Patriots fan in the kisser last year will soon be back rooting in person for Gang Green — but not before blasting MetLife Stadium officials over his 10-game ban.
“You have football players, like Ray Rice, who beats up his wife for no reason other than a drunken argument — he gets a two-game suspension,” Kurt Paschke told The Post in his first interview since the wild melee last Oct. 20 at MetLife following the Jets’ 30-27 win over their archrivals.
Paschke, 39, of Holbrook, LI, said he’s no goon, insisting that the 35-second video clip that went viral tells only a small part of the story.
“My friends were getting harassed by a group of Patriots fans the whole game. My friend Laura, prior to the game, had jaw surgery. So her face was swollen, so they were calling her ‘a monster,’ ” he recalled.
After the game, the Pats fans — all from Massachusetts — continued their verbal assault, said Paschke, whose mom, Colleen, was also at the game.
“I said to one of the Pats fans, ‘The game’s over, this is stupid.’ ”You have football players, like Ray Rice, who beats up his wife for no reason other than a drunken argument — he [only] gets a two-game suspension.
- Kurt Paschke
As he walked away, Paschke said, someone spit on him.
“So I turn around and start screaming, ‘What the f–k!’ But they then ran past my mother and I, shoved my mother to the ground, jumped on my friend Chris and Laura from behind.
“I ran into the pile . . . trying to break it up.”
At this point in the brawl the video clip begins, said Paschke, who runs a silk-screen company.
“In the video what you don’t see . . . is some guy hitting me in the face two more times. Finally . . . I just swing, and unfortunately it wasn’t the guy, it was the girl,” he said, adding that he wasn’t drunk.
Two days later, Paschke and three of the Pats fans were arrested and charged with simple assault and disorderly conduct.
It wasn’t Paschke’s first brush with the law — the son of a retired Suffolk County cop spent three years in prison for criminally negligent homicide after knifing a teen to death in 1992.
In March, the fan-assault charges were reduced to a $289 ticket for “unnecessary noise,” according to the East Rutherford Municipal Court.
The team said Paschke, a season-ticket holder, was barred from the stadium but said he’d be considered for readmittance depending on the outcome of his legal case.
After completing a four-hour fan-conduct course and writing an apology, stadium officials told him he could return on Oct. 12, when the Jets face the Broncos.
“Of course I’ll be back,” he said. “I’ve been a Jets fan my whole life.”