UFC star Polyana Viana left a man with horrific facial injuries after he tried to rob her with a cardboard gun.
The cowering thief even begged her to call the cops in fear of another beating after targeting the wrong person. Viana was waiting for her Uber in Rio de Janeiro when the misguided criminal demanded she hand over her phone.
After the would-be robber claimed he had a gun, Viana said she punched and kicked him before locking him in a rear-naked choke. Viana, 26, kept the man in submission while she waited for police to arrive.
“When he saw I saw him, he sat next to me,” she told MMA Junkie. “He asked me the time, I said it, and I saw he wasn’t going to leave. So I already moved to put my cellphone 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.”
The “gun” turned out to be a cardboard cut-out.
“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, I threw two punches and a kick,” Viana said. “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, who is 1-1 in the UFC but won nine of her 10 MMA fights before that, insists she was calm throughout the attack.
“I was fine because he didn’t even react after. Since he took the punches very quickly, I think he was scared,” she said.
“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.”
Viana had passers-by call the cops, who took the man to the hospital for treatment before hauling him to the police station. She was told the man had been arrested before and recently released for a previous crime.
It is not the first time the UFC fighter has had to fend for herself on the streets of Brazil. In fact, another robber tried to take her phone while she was in her hometown of Belem.
“He broke my umbrella and tried to take my phone. I said I wasn’t going to give it to him,” Viana said. “He tried to take it from my hand, I punched him in the face, and he was scared. This time I was scared. I don’t know if it was because there were two of them. So I was scared, but I think he was more scared than I was, so he jumped on the motorcycle and left.”