A Brazilian police officer and BJJ black belt was off-duty when he ran into a robber and managed to use his impressive Jiu-Jitsu skills to restrain the suspect, putting him in a triangle choke for good measure. It was already going to be one of the worst decisions that the robber has ever made, attempting to mug an off-duty police officer is bad enough to begin with. But attempting to mug an off-duty police officer who also happens to have spent thousands of hours practicing how to restrain and submit trained grapplers? That’s probably the worst decision anyone could ever make.
He’s not alone either, there’s plenty of examples of angry members of the public getting into altercations with someone only to find out that they’re a trained fighter. UFC Hall of Famer Matt Serra famously got confronted by an angry drunk in a restaurant, while ADCC bronze medalist and UFC veteran Ryan Hall also had to restrain a belligerent customer in another restaurant. You don’t have to be an elite MMA fighter to know how to handle yourself when things go badly either, an international level Judoka managed to disarm a mugger who picked on the wrong guy as well.
Realistically though, the average person actually has zero combat sports experience. Provided there isn’t a weapon involved, even just a couple of years of regular training in a practical martial art can often be enough to keep yourself safe. In recent years this has started to actually bleed into the general public as more and more examples have come to light and now police officers have started to toy with the idea of making BJJ training mandatory. More than that though, even legislators have started to put the idea into action and there is a growing push for the average police officer to have a background in BJJ.
The footage of the Brazilian police officer and BJJ black belt using Jiu-Jitsu to subdue a robber and hold him in a triangle choke was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of Jiu Jitsu World:
