Issue 161

December 2017

What happens when an MMA athlete pulls on a mask to take down criminals?

I have some of the craziest stories from the streets – some are funny, but others are terrible. Once, I was in the square and I heard gunshots. We took off toward the shots and this guy across the street grabs his face and falls to the ground: he’d been shot. We saw the shooter running off holding the gun.

We take off after the shooter and he whips around the corner – and as everybody knows from Batman: Year One, you don’t follow someone around a corner! If you can’t see him, you can’t see him and that’s that so we had to let him go. We went back to see how the guy who was shot was, and it turned out to be a girl. She got shot through the neck.

We tried to give first aid. The whole situation got crazy and she ended up dying on the sidewalk. I just sat there next to this giant pile of blood. The paramedics came and went, then firefighters washed the blood down the drain. I sat there for hours. People kept walking by, but they took the crime scene tape off and the day went on. For everyone else, nothing had happened, but my entire life was ruined.

For the funny one, these guys were in a big knife fight on Third Avenue. I called the cops but a few years ago, the response time in Seattle wasn’t good. It was not gonna happen. They were 20 minutes out, so I ran into the fight. I’d recently made it on the news, and one guy turns to me and said, “Oh no! It’s Phoenix Jones! Run!” They threw their knives on the ground and just took off!

The craziest response to my crimefighting was when someone sent me a picture of their baby. They wrote that their last name was really Jones and that they named the baby Phoenix. I was like, wow, that’s awkward. That was the first time someone ever said the baby’s not mine, but it does have my name!

The problem with MMA guys on the street as crime fighters is temperament. I can get called names all day and it doesn’t bother me but an MMA guy is like, ‘Call me that one more time…’ Before you know it, there is a criminal in the corner crying.

When I was training at AMC Pankration, we had a superhero team going on: myself, Mighty Mouse and a guy we call El Chango Blanco. He’s a jiu-jitsu world champion who trains with Tito Ortiz. We also have Greg ‘The Rage’ Sage, who has a Colossus tattoo on his leg, and is an amateur kickboxing champion. It’s like a superhero package. Matt Hume is definitely our Master Splinter.

I was inspired by heroes from MMA and comic books. In fighting, I was always a big BJ Penn fan. I like old school ‘Kid’ Yamamoto, too. Nightwing was my favorite super hero of all time. He was Batman’s first Robin, but he quit hanging out with Batman. He was like, ‘Yo, Batman, you’re kind of a d**k. I’m out. I’m going to go do my own thing.’