(Just off camera, The Grim Reaper stared on in shock as Madadi told him right where he could stick his scythe.)
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, you know by now that, while most of us are content to booze or sleep away most of our lives, MMA fighters opt to spend their leisure time foiling robberies, saving women from knife-wielding psychopaths, and teaching Canadian hoodlums a lesson in male dominance…I mean respect.
For some reason, the rule goes double for MMA fighters from foreign countries. We all remember the tale of Goran Reljic saving two men from drowning by smashing through their submerged vehicle’s windshield and pulling them to safety WHILE suffering from a back injury. Or how Kid Yamamoto dove onto a subway track in Japan to help lift a man to safety. Seriously, it’s like the rest of the world operates under Article 223-7 of the Latham County Penal Code or something.
In either case, one name you can add to the list of heroic MMA fighters is UFC lightweight Reza Madadi, who recently saved an infant toddler when the child fell from a pier near Hornsberg in his home country of Sweden.
Full story after the jump.
As if that weren’t badass enough, apparently Madadi had to help the boy’s father, who dove in after his son, from drowning as well. From Kimura.se:
[Madadi] had been kayaking in the Stockholm Archipelago and was about to buy lunch at a restaurant in Hornsberg, when he witnessed a child of one and a half years old falling from a nearby pier into the sea. The child’s father quickly dove in to help save his son.
Madadi, a former aspiring fireman, immediately jumped into the water and saved both father and child from the turmoil of waves and rapid currents.
A bystander who was very impressed with the performance of the athlete could conclude “If Reza hadn’t been there that boy would have drowned. One person wanted to take pictures of Reza with the father and the son, but Reza humbly declined, with respect to the family’s emotional status.
It looks like in the battle of cops vs. fireman, we can chalk up another victory for the fireman. Word has it Madadi pulled a train with three waitresses that night, whereas the first cop on the scene went home to find that his wife had left him.
Scheduled to face TUF 15 alum Christiano Marcello at UFC 153 in October, the 12-2 “Mad Dog” picked up his first UFC win in dramatic and dominant fashion by choking out Yoislandy Izquierdo in the second round of their UFC on FUEL 2 throwdown, and is currently riding a seven fight win streak that includes victories over Rich Clementi, Carlo Prater, and Junie Browning.
In other words, he has just earned the name power to fight in the co-main event of UFC 151.