Ex-MMA fighter Javier Baez chokes out Florida man who tried to stab him

A Florida man who flew into a violent rage in a Miami parking lot picked the wrong guy to pull a knife on.

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Javier Baez had a brief pro career in the MMA with a 5-2-1 record and retired in 2018, according to SB Nation. But he was still more than a match for an attacker who came at him with a 14-inch knife last week in an apartment parking lot at 4 a.m., SB Nation reported.

Video from a surveillance camera showed Baez parrying the attack by lifting the man and slamming him to the pavement in a chokehold.

Baez, who was out late on Halloween night, said his training just kicked in.

“He got really mad,” Baez said, according to WFOR-TV. “He got a knife and came running at me.”

He said his reaction was “second nature.”

“When you practice every day, you don’t think about it. Put his belly to the floor, put my knee in his back, and called the cops,” WFOR reported.

Police identified the attacker as 50-year-old Omar Morrero. The arrest report said that he saw Baez in his vehicle and began hitting the car window with the knife before he opened the driver’s side door and tried to cut Baez.

“Once I started putting the choke in, he kind of just let go because no one is worried about anything else but breathing when you’re losing air,” Baez told WPLG.

“Easy peasy,” he concluded.

Marrero was charged with one count each of burglary, assault or battery, and aggravated battery, WPLG reported.

Baez said he didn’t know the attacker but had seen him around the neighborhood.