“That’s not a knife. That’s a knife.” UFC bantamweight contender Marlon ‘Chito’ Vera didn’t say these famous words but he may as well have. Because when a podcaster asked him what he would do if someone pulled a knife on him, Vera calmly warned him about having a bigger knife a gun.
Vera appeared as a guest on an episode of the ShortandSimple podcast and seemed to have a lot of fun, including waterboarding the show’s host. But the best moment, and one that is going viral right now is definitely him raising his shirt to reveal he was packing heat.
UFC fighter Chito Vera demonstrated what he’d do if someone pulled a knife on him pic.twitter.com/joTYYMTzBn
— Happy Punch (@HappyPunch) January 21, 2025
While it’s still debatable if a gun is more effective in close-quarter combat, it doesn’t remind one of this iconic scene from the Australian cult classic ‘Crocodile Dundee’.
They were not prepared for a real knife.
Stream Crocodile Dundee for free on Pluto TV! #SummerOfCinema pic.twitter.com/6uKYWImaB3
— Pluto TV (@PlutoTV) August 27, 2024
Being a world-class professional mixed martial artist, Vera knows better than to show up and engage in street fights unless he is forced into one. Street fights are wild and unpredictable, so why take the chance?
That said, Vera gets called out a lot, especially podcasters, who want to put themselves with him in a hypothetical situation. And it’s always the usual suspect- Bradley Martyn.
Martin, being over 250 lbs has asked many a mixed martial artist how they would fare against him. While fighters like Nate Diaz have brushed him off by subtly asking him to stay in his lane, Vera had given him a detailed account of how the fight would actually go.
“If you don’t knock me out, I’m gonna keep coming. I’m animal… I’m gonna take your eyes out of your face. This is the truth by the way. We’re not talking about, no. It’s to the death, that’s opening your guts and f***ing playing with them. I’m a professional street fighter.”
Chito Vera tells Bradley Martyn the truth on who would win in street fight pic.twitter.com/vODzWcf38I
— (@mmamarcuss) September 20, 2023
Well, not for nothing but will at least put the fear of god in a man; something UFC strawweight Polyana Vianna knows a lot about.
Vianna beats up mugger in Rio
Now, Vianna didn’t indulge in gouging out intestines, but when a mugger tried to steal her phone, she made sure he knew it was not worth the trouble.
In 2019, a suspicious man sat next to Vianna and threatened her. He claimed to be armed and asked her to quietly submit her phone to him. Where most people would have panicked, Vianna thought if she could just get up, the mugger wouldn’t have enough time to draw his gun. “So I stood up. I threw two punches and a kick.“, she told MMA Junkie.
“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.”
She then realized that the guy wasn’t even carrying a gun. It was a cardboard cutout shaped like one. So she just put him in a kimura-like position till the cops arrived.
There’s surely a lesson to be learned here somewhere. It probably goes along the lines of ‘whether it’s a fake gun or a knife, whether you are a 26o lbs podcaster or a 150 lbs mugger, just don’t pick fights with professionally trained martial artists’.