Women's bantamweight Leslie Smith, 32, reportedly turned the tables on a man who allegedly groped her friend outside a San Francisco bar this past Saturday.

Smith's coach, Cesar Gracie, writes in a post to Facebook that a "dirtbag" groped her friend but "what he didn't know was that [two] of the women were MMA fighters currently in the UFC."

Smith tells the website MMA Fighting that she was about to head into The Mint when a man passed behind her group and groped one of her friends.

"I followed him and I was like, 'Hey, you can't do that,'" said Smith. "And he was like, 'I can do whatever I want.' And I was like, 'No, you can't.' Then he turned around and spit on me and threw a big right hand."

The post, which was first flagged by MMA Fighting, includes a blow-by-blow of the events.

Dirtbag decides to sexually harass group of females. What he didn't know was that 2 of the women were MMA fighters...

Posted by Cesar Gracie on Sunday, May 31, 2015


Smith runs self-defense seminars at Gracie's gym and reportedly considers herself a pacifist when she isn't actively competing. The incident, then, sounds like a departure for a woman nicknamed "The Peacemaker."

"It's happened to me before," said Smith. "I don't think I know a single woman who hasn't been in a situation where there was a dude who came too close to her and violated her personal space. It's a situation where if a dude did that to another dude, there would be a fight. That wouldn't happen in the first place. When I saw people reacting to it so happily, I was like, OK we can share it. Let's share it."