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MMA Junkie’s 2019 ‘Robbery of the Year’: Polyana Viana’s vigilante justice

I’ll be honest here: When we got the assignments for our end-of-year features, I thought I’d been handed the short straw with the “Robbery of the Year” award.

Only in very rare circumstances do I think actual MMA robberies exist, and those occurrences are rarer still when you sharpen the focus to the very highest levels of the sport. After I was given this assignment, I cast my mind back to fights that left me thinking, “Wow. That was a truly awful decision.” I couldn’t think of many at all.

Sure, there were some questionable ones. I had Volkan Oezdemir beating Dominick Reyes at UFC on ESPN+ 5 in London back in March. According to Oezdemir, so did Reyes’ corner. But was it so egregious to be dubbed a robbery? I don’t think so.

Then, of course, there was the much-debated decision by Herb Dean to stop the Ben Askren vs. Robbie Lawler fight at UFC 235 after he adjudged Lawler to have briefly lost consciousness during Askren’s bulldog choke. Contentious? Yes. But a robbery? That’s debatable. At the time, I also thought Lawler’s arm seemingly going limp suggested he had blacked out – even if only for a split-second.

More recently, the UFC’s final pay-per-view show of the year saw Marlon Moraes get the nod from the judges after a cracker of a bantamweight bout with Jose Aldo at UFC 245 in Las Vegas. Most people I spoke to backstage after the event agreed with me and thought Aldo had done enough to win the fight. Dana White thought the same, too.

Was it an absolute travesty that Moraes got the split decision? Not really, no. Indeed, the excellent MMADecisions.com website, which tracks media members’ scores via social media, listed an even split between Aldo and Moraes in the final verdicts. So Moraes’ win certainly couldn’t be considered a robbery.

The closest thing I saw to a robbery in 2019 came back at that London event, when British welterweight Danny Roberts was adjudged to have “technically submitted” to London-based Brazilian Claudio Silva, despite the fact that he’d actually escaped Silva’s nasty-looking armbar by the time the referee stepped in to stop the fight. Apparently, the referee reacted to a grunt made by Roberts just before he managed to pull his arm free, but at the time, we were none the wiser. It was bizarre, confusing to everyone watching and left Roberts absolutely livid.

Another leftfield contender is the Cage Warriors 106 main event between welterweight champion Ross Houston and interim champ Nicolas Dalby at the British promotion’s “Night of Champions” event in London in the summer. The pair went back and forth in a fantastic scrap that turned into a bloodbath so bad that it eventually forced referee Marc Goddard to call off the bout due to the canvas being dangerously slippery.

The robbery here wasn’t Goddard’s decision – he really had little choice in the circumstances. It was the fact that we never saw a rematch. Dalby headed off to the UFC, while Houston was left on the Cage Warriors roster. The fact that fight wasn’t rebooked, either in Cage Warriors or in the UFC, certainly seems like a crime to me. Maybe that’s something the UFC could rectify in the coming year. Who knows?

And in the same vein, we were all robbed by circumstance when Jorge Masidal and Nate Diaz went toe to toe for the “BMF” title at UFC 241 in New York. The buildup to the fight had everyone on the edges of their seats for a fight that everyone expected to deliver. And it did until an unfortunate cut above Diaz’s eye prompted a second look from the cageside physician, who advised that the fight be stopped. On reflection – and seeing the shots of Diaz’s cut immediately after the fight – it was probably the right call. But it sadly robbed us of what might have turned into one of the fights of 2019.

But we really can’t run a piece on MMA’s “Robbery of the Year” without the only MMA story of the year to actually include a robbery. Well, an attempted one, anyway.

Exactly one year ago to the day, Brazilian strawweight Polyana Viana was waiting for an Uber in front of her apartment complex in Jacarepagua, Rio de Janeiro, when she was approached by a man who claimed he was armed, then attempted to rob her and take her mobile phone.

Bad move.

Viana proceeded to batter the would-be robber with strikes before subduing him with a rear-naked choke, then held him in a Kimura until the police arrived.

Speaking to MMA Junkie, Viana picked up the story: “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 realized it was too soft (to be real).

“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.’

“I was fine because he didn’t even react after. Since he took the punches very quickly, I think he was scared. So he didn’t react anymore. He told me to let him go, like: ‘I just asked for the time.’ I said: ‘Asked for the time my ass!’ because he saw I was very angry. I said I wouldn’t let go and that I was going to call the police.

“He said: ‘Call the police, then,’ because he was scared I was going to beat him up more.”

OK, the mugger didn’t succeed in his attempted robbery of Viana, but the Brazilian strawweight still deserves to accept our “Robbery of the Year” award. Although he initially attempted to rob her, it turned out that she robbed him … of his dignity.

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