Jared Gordon recently shared a video on his social media that showed him, and other family members, taking down an individual that pulled out a baseball bat on them.
Gordon is set to return to the octagon on Saturday at UFC 278 and faces Leonardo Santos in a lightweight bout, which takes place at Vivint Arena in Salt Lake City.
“Flash” revealed that the video was from an incident that took place in 2019, but he felt compelled to share it.
“The video was old, I just re-posted it because that’s what the public wants to see,” Gordon told members of the media at the UFC 278 media day. They don’t care much about inspiring stuff. All they want is blood and violence and sex. Every now and then I’ll throw something ridiculous up.
“I was on vacation in Chicago with my family, including my parents and my cousin. There was an ATM in front of my car and a man was inside. [I laughed], I started filming and noticed that the ATM was blocking my door. It’s like, “What is the f*** this guy doing ?'”
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Gordon looks to get back on track after having his three-fight winning streak snapped by Grant Dawson via submission at UFC Vegas 53 in April. Prior to that, the 33-year-old earned decision wins over Joe Solecki, Danny Chavez and Chris Fishgold.
While he’s entering the octagon coming off of a loss, the incident that happened in the video could’ve been a lot worse.
“We’re in Chicago and I’m like, ‘Is he going to pull out an AK-47 or something?’ But he pulls out a bat,” Gordon explained. “Now I’m like, ‘I’m going to kill this guy.’ I got really upset very fast because he starts walking toward me, and I’m with my parents who are in their 60s, and I grab him like, ‘What are you [doing]?’ He’s like, ‘You’re filming my license plate,’ and I’m like, ‘Dude, you know what’s on your bumper sticker, unless this isn’t your car and you never looked at it. You haven’t gotten any attention with this bumper sticker before?’
“My cousins husband grabbed him and we lowered him. I then stepped on him neck, tore the bat from his hands, and that was .”
In the wake of the incident, Gordon was surprised by the first request for the bat. He explained how he managed to control his anger during a difficult situation.
“He said, “Can you have your bat back?” I replied, “Are you kidding me?” No, [you can’t],'” Gordon said. He just continued on his journey. It’s hard to believe that I didn’t make him pound his head in. I feel like it’s because my parents were there, but I’ve seen my parents fight in the street before, so it’s not like it wouldn’t be anything new for us, but somehow I was able to restrain myself — [there would be] blood, then you’ve got to call the cops, so I just let it go.”
