The Situation Defends His Snooki 'Love Tap'

USMagazine, Friday, October 8, 2010, 6:53am (PDT)

Another Jersey Shore scandal.

On Thursday's episode of the hit MTV show, Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino raised his hand to Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi when she refused to leave the club. "Don't f---ing slap me in the face and tell me that I need to go home," she snapped.

But The Situation, 28, tells MTV News he was only trying to protect her and would never hit her.

"Snooki sometimes drinks a little too much," he says. "She is unaware of her surroundings and unaware of what's going on. Everybody was leaving, and she was the only one staying there. We usually go as a group and stay as a group. To avoid what happened in Season 1 [Snooki, 22, was punched in the face by a bar patron], I really wanted to try and keep an eye on her and not necessarily slap some sense into her, but let her know, 'Hey, you can't be here by yourself. You're a little girl, and the whole group was leaving.' It was a little love tap."

Though he says he probably "went about it the wrong way," he tells MTV, "It's not like I punched somebody in the face. It's not like I did a full smack, a hard smack. It was a little tap to her cheek. Like, 'Wake up, you're going to get hurt.' And if you care for somebody, that is definitely acceptable, because you're looking out for somebody."

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