One would hope that this will one day go without saying, but there are all sorts of reasons why groping someone you don't know is not a very strong play.
For male nightclub patrons in the San Francisco area, Leslie Smith just added another reason. That reason is Leslie Smith.
The UFC women's bantamweight brought the hammer down on an unidentified schmo who grabbed her friend's backside Saturday night at a San Francisco public house.
Smith, who was at the club with some friends, recounted the story to Marc Raimondi of MMA Fighting in an article published Monday:
I followed him and I was like, 'Hey, you can't do that.' And he was like, 'I can do whatever I want.' And I was like, 'No, you can't.' Then he turned around and spit on me and threw a big right hand ... I pushed him against a building and then I double-legged him. I took him down against the cage and then I started to take his back, but his hair was really gross and it didn't quite feel right. I let go of that and just dropped elbows on him. He turned over and I just dropped elbows on him from mount against the building until he started saying, 'I'm sorry.' Then I stopped as soon as he said sorry, because that was really the only thing I went over there for.
The TKO is even more impressive given that Smith (7-6-1) is currently out of UFC action as she recovers from a torn meniscus. So she did this with at least one leg that was probably not quite 100 percent.
The 32-year-old Smith also garnered attention in her last official fight, which came in November and ended in a doctor's stoppage TKO win for opponent Jessica Eye.
A scene of particular violence arose when Smith's ear became partially detached (images NSFW) during the action. (Though certainly gruesome, the "cauliflower ear" condition common in many wrestlers makes fighters more susceptible to this, and thus it is not an unprecedented injury in MMA.) Smith, for her part, wanted to continue in the fight before the cageside physician waved off the contest.
So, yes. This is a very tough woman.
Cesar Gracie, who coaches Smith as well as other UFC regulars like Nick Diaz, Nate Diaz and Gilbert Melendez, was the first to go public with the story in a Facebook post published Sunday.
"Dirtbag decides to sexually harass group of females," Gracie wrote in part. "What he didn't know was that 2 of the women were MMA fighters currently in the UFC ... [Smith] delivered a series of elbows until the man, now having his face looking more like hamburger meat, yelled out that he was sorry and that he respected them.
"He left having learned a valuable lesson and the women returned to the club."
