UFC strawweight Polyana Viana knocks down, submits robber in Brazil

MMAfighting.com

Polyana Viana put a beating on someone over the weekend, but that won’t enter her official MMA record.

The Brazilian fighter, who competes in the UFC’s strawweight division, used her mixed martial arts skills Saturday night when a man tried to steal her phone next to her apartment complex in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Viana confirmed to MMA Fighting after a report by MMAjunkie.

Viana, who is 1-1 inside the Octagon and 10-2 as a MMA fighter, was waiting for an Uber around 8 p.m. local time when a man approached her.

“I always look around because people say it’s a dangerous area, but I never witnessed something like this before,” Viana told MMA Fighting. “I looked around and didn’t see anyone, so I sat down and started playing Free Fire on my phone. When I heard footsteps, this guy came and sat right next to me.

”He asked what time it was, I answered, but I felt something was weird so I put my phone in my waist. He saw that I knew what he was going to do, so he put his hand in his waist, over a ‘gun,’ and said ‘give me the phone and don’t try to react because I’m armed.’ I looked at his waist and knew that wasn’t a gun.”

The man wasn’t armed. In fact, the only thing he had was a “gun” made out of cardboard paper. Viana, who was wearing a red UFC shirt, decided to react.

“I didn’t think twice,” Viana said. “He was sitting too close to me, so I thought he wouldn’t have time to react and stab be or whatever if he really had a knife or something else with him. I hit him with a left cross and then a right cross and he got knocked down, but I was so agitated that I threw a kick as well. Two punches and a kick. The kick landed flush on his face, and I believe that’s what caused that damage and he started bleeding.”

On his social media, UFC president Dana Whiteshared a photo of Viana and the man after the beating, adding that trying to rob a UFC fighter was a “bad f****** idea.”

With the robber bleeding on the ground, Viana locked in a rear-naked choke and asked for help. Viana released the choke as people called the cops, but kept the robber under control with a kimura while waiting for police.

The man was taken to an emergency health center and then to a police station. According to Viana, he had just been released recently after serving three years for armed robbery.

After such a scary situation on the streets, Viana can’t wait to finally let her hands go one more time, this time in the eight-sided cage. Coming off an unanimous decision defeat to J.J. Aldrich at last August’s UFC 227, six months after a successful first-round submission in her promotional debut against Maia Stevenson at UFC Belem, Viana expects to be back in action around March.