Ex-boxer black bear - An ex-boxer use some of his old ring skills when he accidentally came across a black bear and its cub while walking his dog through the bush outside the city of Sudbury in Ontario on Sunday.
Rick Nelson, 61, couldn’t believe his eyes, neither could his dog, and he knew it was a fight when the cub cried out for the black bear’s defense, according to CBC News.
It only took seconds for the 300-pound mother bear to come crashing through the bush. She stood on her hind legs and growled angrily in front of Nelson.
Nelson reacted first, with a quick punch to the animal’s mouth. Unfortunately, his punch only grazed the black bear’s teeth, causing his knuckles to bleed.
Scared for his life, the bear struck hard by digging a gash across the ex-boxer’s chest and shoulders. The bear stood moving her front limbs repeatedly in the air, as if she was throwing punches.
Nelson knew that if he didn’t put up a fight against the bear, he could die, so he punched again with an uppercut that hit the bear’s snout. The animal felt the hit immediately and dropped to all fours.
The ex-boxer couldn’t believe that he made the animal’s nose bleed as it backed slowly away and disappeared into the forest with its small cub.
But what’s interesting about the story is Nelson’s past. Separate from his boxing days as a youth, he also hunted bears in the past.
“He’s experienced with bears. He always knew, if it came to it, to hit a bear in the snout,” his wife Sheryl told the Sudbury Star. “When it went back into the bush, it was like two warriors backing away from the battle.”
Sheryl says his co-workers are now calling him “Kung Fu Panda” after his successful boxing match with the 300-lb animal. But Nelson knows he’s very lucky to have walked away from the fight with a scratch or too. It couldn’t been worse. “He knows he was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Sheryl said.
Nelson told the Huffington Post Canada that he was standing near a cliff, with no other passage to go. It was either the bear, or the cliff. “Once the cub was safe, it was fine. That’s all it was there to do, get its cub to safety. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said.
