‘A Pizza Stops a Fight’ in WeHo

Provo Pizza’s Vito Iacopelli not only knows how to sate your hunger with a pizza, he knows how to stop a fight with one.

That’s the story told in a video titled “He Stopped a Fight with Pizza” that already has garnered 36 million views on the Facebook page of SoFlo Media, an L.A.-based company founded by another Italian, Antonio Lievano, who is involved in an interesting controversy apparently unrelated to the Provo sidewalk fight.

A copy of the video on Iacopelli’s YouTube channel (posted above) says it was taken by the security camera outside the restaurant, which is at 8729 Santa Monica Blvd. near Hancock. Apparently filmed about two weeks ago, it shows one man jumping out of his car and assaulting another on the sidewalk as Iacopelli, Provo’s famous Neapolitan chef, walks out the door, pizza in hand.

As the men wrestle on the sidewalk, Iacopelli approaches them and offers them the pizza. Soon they stand and walk peacefully in opposite directions.

Not quite a “that’s amore” moment, which, as Dean Martin described it, occurs when a moon (not a fist) hits your eye like a big pizza pie. But still, a “pizzaful” resolution to fight.

Iacopelli, a native of Puglia, opened Provo with Jake Ireland in January of last year.