‘I felt like Batman’: Watch the Florida MMA fighter wrestle a 10-foot gator and WIN by sitting on his shoulders after he roamed around an elementary school parking lot
- Mike Dragic wrestled the alligator in front of spectators in Jacksonville
Video has surfaced of a Florida MMA fighter wrestling a 10-foot-long alligator and restraining it by sitting on his shoulders.
Amateur fighter Mike Dragich, 33, took on the unusual opponent in a parking lot at a Jacksonville elementary school.
Dragich wrestled the gator in front of a crowd of cheering spectators.
“I really felt like Batman, you know,” he told FOX 35 Orlando.
‘We will get there. I walked through the gate. And boom. There it was just ready to go, right there in the parking lot, and we just had to get the job done,” he added.
Amateur fighter Mike Dragich, 33, took on the unusual opponent in a parking lot at a Jacksonville elementary school as people gathered to watch
In the video, with the trap still around the alligator’s neck, Dragich jumps onto the animal’s shoulders and sits on it to restrain it, accompanied by several Jacksonville firefighters
In the video, Dragich enters the school parking lot and tries to grab the gator by the tail, causing it to snap at it.
Dressed in a muscle shirt, he can then be seen trying to pin it down with a catch post while battling it out on the grass in front of screaming onlookers.
The local veteran uses the stick around the alligator’s neck.
Footage shows the animal rolling around in circles, desperate to shake off its opponent.
With the trap still around the alligator’s neck, Dragich jumps onto the animal’s shoulders and sits on it to restrain it, accompanied by several Jacksonville firefighters.
“A lot of fighters will understand that when you go to the cage you’re nervous, but once that cage door closes you have to be focused and that’s honestly what I remembered from that night,” Dragich said.
Florida has a statewide population of approximately 1.3 million alligators.
According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, residents can report “nuisance” alligators over four feet long that may pose a threat to people, pets or property so that a licensed trapper can come out and remove them.
The reptiles that are removed are then euthanized so that they do not return to the sites where they were captured or cause disruptions to the existing social structures of alligators in other areas, the Commission said.