Ex-MMA Fighter Takes Down Knife-Wielding Attacker

A man armed with a knife in Miami chose the wrong person to scrap with at four in the morning. In the early morning hours of Nov. 1, Javier Baez arrived at his apartment complex when the knife-wielding man confronted him in the parking lot. What he didn't realize was that Baez is a former MMA fighter.

It all started when Baez saw the man in a confrontation with someone else. "Guy was out there screaming on the phone, literally was fighting for a while with some woman," Baez recounted to CBS News. "He tapped on my door window. I told him to leave me alone, and then he came at me with a knife. I told him to leave me alone. I'm calling the cops. I hope he doesn't break my window. That's all I cared about."

Baez got out of the car to try to defuse the situation. Rather than whale on the man, Baez chose a less violent option. Surveillance footage showed him blocking the man's attempted stab, picking him up, and throwing him on the ground.

"He got really mad," Baez told CBS News. "He got a knife and came running at me. Well, the rest is on video."

As for what came over him in the moment, Baez stated plainly it was all "second nature." "When you practice every day, you don't think about it," he said. "[I] put his belly to the floor, put my knee in his back, and called the cops."

"I stayed calm, kept my balance, kept my composure," he added. "Didn't bring him down and start beating on. Just took him down."

This is a prime example of why it's important to pick your battles.