Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine recently recalled how his martial arts training led him to defend his then-Metallica bandmate Lars Ulrich from an Armored Saint “dog pile” at a party, sharing the story during an interview with OCKOtv.
Mustaine explained that he felt compelled to step in because he saw his friend being targeted by multiple people.
“If I’m with one of my friends and my friend can’t take care of himself and somebody bigger is picking on him, f*ck it, man, I’m in it,” Mustaine said. “That’s what happened with Lars one time. We were at a party, and the guys from Armored Saint were jumping on Lars, and they were intentionally – I believe – they were doing something called a dog pile, where everybody jumps on top of somebody.”
He then described how he used his martial arts skills to stop the altercation, which resulted in an injury to Armored Saint guitarist Phil Sandoval.
“And I told them to stop,” Mustaine continued. “They didn’t stop, and I just kicked them. And y’know, I’m a trained martial artist. I broke his leg – it was Phil [Sandoval], the guitar player. And that was because I wanted to protect Lars.”
Mustaine also reflected on his relationship with his former bandmates and how he felt in that moment.
“We were very close at the time,” Mustaine added. “I mean, I still deep down inside of me, I still care about those guys, but it’s not what it was. But when I watched somebody hurting him, I couldn’t not say anything. I had to say something. I had to do something.”
This incident highlights the close bond Mustaine and Ulrich shared during the early days of Metallica, and it also points back to a time when Metallica and Armored Saint were closely intertwined in the same local scene.
Armored Saint was formed in 1982 by brothers Phil Sandoval and Gonzo Sandoval, along with guitarist Dave Prichard, singer John Bush, and bassist Joey Vera. The band emerged from the same early-1980s Los Angeles heavy metal scene that Metallica came out of, which explains how the two groups crossed paths so often during that period.
Bush later described just how deep those local roots ran. He said Armored Saint was “forged in the garages of the Gonzo & Phil Sandoval and Dave Prichard’s parent’s houses in the early 1980s.”
Mustaine’s martial arts background also played a role in a separate, more infamous chapter of his career. An account of the 1983 incident that led to his firing from Metallica notes that his “martial arts training partner intervened and broke up the fight,” after which Metallica “fired Mustaine on the spot.” The same source places his dismissal on April 11, 1983, while the band was on tour in New York.
The ties between the two bands continued well beyond that early era. Joey Vera said, “We were partially part of the thrash scene, but it was probably because of our connection with METALLICA in ’84, in ’85, when we toured with them several times in the States.” Both Bush and Vera were offered Metallica auditions at different points in the 1980s but chose to stay with Armored Saint.
Decades later, Mustaine’s account of the party confrontation serves as a reminder of how tight — and occasionally volatile — the relationships within that early L.A. metal community could be.
