During his career in the UFC, Mixed Martial Arts fighter Denis 'The Menace' Strojnic saw his fair share of the action. The former super heavyweight has five knockouts and 13 wins to his name, and he's still finding ways to make use of his ability. Someone of his calibre is not someone you want to go up against, inside or outside the ring, as one man found out recently.
CCTV footage from outside a nightclub has been released, showing Stojnic coming to the rescue after a woman was assaulted in the street. The former UFC fighter ran out of the club to save the woman from an unidentified man who had followed her outside. After she exited the building, he grabbed her hair, pulling her behind a car - before Strojnic intervened.
The incident took place last month, outside the Dorian Gray nightclub in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The 38-year-old owns the club, and while he hasn't fought competitively since 2016, he was more than ready to leap into action when he saw what was happening on the club's surveillance cameras.
"When I saw on CCTV that a huge man, even bigger than me, hit a woman with a punch to the head, I immediately ran outside and reacted that way to protect the woman from the abuser," he told The Sun.
"I took control over him and with the security team I sent the woman to a taxi, but she did not want to report the case to the police.
"Unfortunately in our country violence against women occurs often. My duty as a man, citizen and then as an owner of a club is that everyone in the building feels safe. Especially women because they are someone's children, sisters, mothers."
Strojnic isn't the only UFC fighter to use his talents to enact justice outside of the ring lately. Earlier this month, Strawweight MMA fighter Polyana Viana was assaulted outside her apartment in Rio de Janeiro, but rather than making off with her phone like he intended - the perp ended up beaten and subdued by Viana until the police arrived.
"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 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 realised it was too soft.
"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. 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.'"
Fortunately both these UFC players were able to stop what could have been extremely dangerous situations from escalating any further.
