Former world kickboxing champion Mike Zambidis came face to face with a couple of burglars who broke into his house in Athens.

The two criminals, both in their teens, broke into Mike’s house, a move they would probably have avoided in retrospect, as the champ told protogthema.gr.

“He sees me, he goes to leave and the other one in front of me also tries to flee and then I say to him, I will catch you and I will hit you later. So stay here,” Mike says. “He says ‘okay’ to me and shouts at the other partner and I tell him this is my home.”

“It was Sunday afternoon around 5:30 pm, I was returning home when I saw someone jumping on the railings. He almost landed on my car. I see him, I stop next to him, he did not know that it is my house and I say to him ‘What are you doing there?’. When he sees me, he is excited. ‘Mike, you?’. ‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘What are you doing here; Why did you jump the wall?’ He tells me “nothing, nothing. I was taking photos.’ I say ‘photos for Instagram or to steal?’ and then he pulled back a little. To avoid him running away, I tell him that I live across the street. And then he replies that ‘they know me around here.’ I go downstairs, I approach him slowly and at some point, while I have come up close to him, I suddenly see another person who had gone from the back of the house and was trying to open the door. He had a screwdriver but it did not work because the doors of my house are made in such a way that you have to tear them down to get inside. He sees me, he goes to leave and the other one in front of me goes and then I tell him ‘I will catch you and I will hit you later. So sit here.’ He says ‘okay’ and yells at his accomplice and I tell him ‘This is my house,'” Iron Mike said.

And he continued his story: “We had called the Police and my girlfriend did the best police reportage ever. She recorded videos and photos of them. Everything. The police of DI.AS came after five minutes, the youth were really very fast, we had taken photos and the license plate even from the motorbike that was parked below and within a short time they managed to locate them”.

“I did not hit them. Because we had already called the Police and they were leaving at that time. I also thought that I did not find them in my house, they did not attack me to invoke self-defense, they were also minors. So I operated calmly, I called the Police, we also had their photos and one of them was located by the police. He is a 17.5-year-old Greek man who has been arrested about 17 times for theft and burglary.”