A Florida veteran and MMA fighter put on a show for nearly 200 people outside a Jacksonville elementary school when he jostled a 10-foot-gator before wrangling it into submission, video shows.
FOX 35 in Orlando reported that video shot of the incident shows Mike Dragich grabbing the 10-foot beast’s tail and holding his own in an impromptu match between man and beast.
“We get there, I walked through the gate, and boom,” Dragich told the news outlet. “There it was, just ready to go right there in the parking lot, and we just had to get the job done.”
Florida man wrestles alligator at Jacksonville elementary school. (FOX 35 Orlando)
The MMA fighter tried once again to pull the alligator by the tail, but he lost control of it after dragging the reptile just a couple of inches.
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The entire time Dragich was wrangling the gator, the crowd of spectators could be heard screaming with excitement and fear.
Dragich was able to get behind the gator and grab it by its neck, and that is when the scuffle really took off.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says, “Alligators are a conservation success story in Florida. Florida has a healthy and stable alligator population, which is estimated at 1.3 million and consists of alligators.” (Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission )
“I said it before, I felt like Batman, for real, you know, I show up. I walk out,” he told FOX 35. “There are a lot of comments saying I look like Stone Cold walking up to this alligator.”
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Stone Cold Steve Austin is a former WWE wrestler who in his day, would walk from the backstage area of arenas through a crowd of screaming fans to get to the ring, without a worry in the world that he was going to serve up a can of “whoop ass.”
After a little while wrangling with the alligator, video shows Dragich and several firefighters straddling the alligator as three others help keep it down.
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“A lot of fighters will understand that… when you go to the cage, you’re nervous, but once that cage door closes, you gotta be focused,” he told the news organization. “…honestly, that’s what I remembered that night.”
