The population of Rio de Janeiro is a little more than 6 million, but, on Saturday night, an alleged mugger managed to pick out a UFC fighter among those multitudes.
UFC strawweight Polyana Viana said she was waiting for an Uber when she was approached by a man claiming to have a gun. The results were not pretty.
“When he saw that I saw him, he sat next to me,” Viana told the MMAJunkie mixed martial arts Web site. “He asked me the time, I said it and I saw he wasn’t going to leave. So I already moved to put my cell phone in my waist. And then he said, ‘Give me the phone. Don’t try to react, because I’m armed.’ Then he put his hand over [a gun], but I realized it was too soft.”
Photo: AFP
“He was really close to me, so I thought, ‘If it’s a gun, he won’t have time to draw it’ — so I stood up,” she added. “I threw two punches and a kick. He fell, then I caught him in a rear-naked choke. Then I sat him down in the same place we were before and said, ‘Now we’ll wait for the police.’”
Viana posted photographs of her bloodied and bruised alleged attacker.
She kept him in a hold until police arrived.
She said the man’s wounds were treated before he was taken to the station, where Viana filed a police report.
“I was fine,” Viana said. “I was fine, because he didn’t even react after. Since he took the punches very quickly, I think he was scared. So he didn’t react anymore. He told me to let him go, like ‘I just asked for the time.’ I said, ‘Asked for the time my ass,’ because he saw I was very angry. I said I wouldn’t let go and that I was going to call the police. He said, ‘Call the police, then’ because he was scared I was going to beat him up more.”
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