Bantamweight Felipe Colares narrates how he stopped a mugger from escaping in Rio de Janeiro.
Former UFC bantamweight Felipe Colares had the chance to help a person in need and grabbed it. As ‘Cabocao’ prepares for his first fight after being released from the promotion, he found himself in a not so unusual situation in Rio de Janeiro when he witnessed a mugging taking place in the street.
Though Colares first thought it was an argument between a young woman and her boyfriend, the fighter noticed the situation was odd when the man took the victim’s cellphone and rode away on a bycicle. Felipe tells Combate he decided to chase the man at that moment and used his Brazilian jiu-jitsu skills to hold him still until the police arrived at the scene.
“I was returning from training with my friends. We were just talking about how violence against women was increasing and I saw this guy kind of arguing with a young woman and then he yanked the cellphone from her hand. She sat on ground, crying. He got on his bycicle and rode away. I thought he had assaulted her and went there to file him under the Maria da Penha law (a Brazilian law for violence against women),”
“The woman said he had mugged her so I gave chase,” Felipe sad. “We swept him and I immobilized him with a kimura. I stayed on the ground with him for a while, holding him in a rear-naked choke. People want to hit him, but I warned them not to, because he was under my custody. If something happened to him, he could say it had been men. We waited for the police to arrive, she recognized him and got her phone back. She said he wasn’t her boyfriend, he had really mugged her.”
A member of a government program created to battle violence against women, Felipe said he used the techniques learned in the program to stop the robber from escaping. Once he knew the situation was safe, Colares then used his grappling to keep the man secured.
“I work in a government project called Empoderadas (Empowered), which fights any kind of violence against women. I learn prevention techniques and verbalization to avoid it. Erica Paes, a jiu-jitsu champion, is responsible for the program. It was all very useful so I could make this arrest. I used verbalization to see if he was armed and then I stepped in to immbolize him. This program has saved the lives of many women. Erica has been working to dimish the numbers of cases of violence against women.”
Colares (10-4) was released from the UFC on a two-fight skid, with losses to Chase Hooper and Chris Gutierrez. Now, he prepares to make his Ares FC 12, on February 17, in Paris, France, against Alioune Nahaye.