MMA SUBMISSION:
BENJI RADACH IS CRAZY (AND HEROIC)

A two-day stretch of his life seems like Grand Theft Auto.

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"Go ahead, I dare ya."

What's below is 100 percent true. Please, we beg of you, do not try this at home. In fact, we wouldn't recommend trying this during a game of Grand Theft Auto. That's how crazy the following Benji Radach stories are.

Radach just beat Murilo "Ninja" Rua in a big Elite XC upset, on the Kimbo Slice undercard. Now Radach, 19-4 with 15 knockouts and two submissions in his career, says he'll fight again in February, against either Scott Smith or the winner of Joey Villasenor/Robbie Lawler. "I'll probably look back on the 'Ninja' win as the turning point in my career," Radach says.

Now, as for the insanity, let's dial back to Oct. 23, 2004. Radach was in Vancouver (WA) to see his friend, Dennis Hallman, fight. After Hallman beat Landon Showalter by submission , Radach and Hallman went bar-hopping, with both fighters' girlfriends along for the late-night tour.

Around midnight, a group of guys approached the two and started harassing Radach's girlfriend. Radach tried to pull her away and avoid fisticuffs. Hallman, however, yelled at the guys and one of them made a run at him. "He was going to earhole Dennis," Radach says. "Dennis never saw it coming."

Radach did, though, and leveled the guy with a right hand. "He was on the ground, spitting Chiclets," Radach says. That's fighter talk for losing teeth.

Next thing Radach knew, another guy was pulling a gun. Radach took off running, with the group of guys following, as Hallman and both women slipped away. He ducked behind cars, then dove in a dumpster to hide. Eventually the gun-toting guys stopped looking, and Radach went back to a friend's house in a daze.

The next morning, the four-person group reunited at a diner. In the middle of discussing the previous night's events, a little girl ran up to their table. "There's a guy with a gun over there," she cried.

Sure enough, 500 feet away at the cash register was a robber yelling at the cashier to hand over the money. A hysterical manager was screaming at the cashier to follow the thief's instructions and the robber was yelling at the manager to shut up.

Most of the diner (including Hallman) reacted like most people would—everybody ducked under their tables. Not Radach.

"I'm going to get him," he told Holman.

"No, don't," Hallman wisely said.

Radach darted 50 feet, wrist-locked the guy to the ground, then popped him so hard that many in the diner thought the gun had gone off. It hadn't. The loud bang was Radach rearranging the guy's face (he needed facial surgery to repair the damage). Turns out, the burglar had just gotten out of jail after another botched robbery attempt and happened to pick the one diner on the planet where two MMA fighters were eating brunch a few hours after having a gun pulled on one of them.

Just as crazy: how much Radach's life has changed since those wild days of his "youth." Radach, 29, now limits his brawls to sanctioned MMA bouts, and on the side, he works as one of the big-wigs at LA Boxing, a rising force in the fitness world. Radach is actually a suit—though he rarely puts on a suit. He's in charge of certifying trainers in what's become a national chain, and he's in lots of meetings with guys in actual suits as LA Boxing branches out.

He probably doesn't tell this story in boardrooms often.

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