Mariusz Ksiazkiewicz was just taking out the trash. A normal activity on a normal Wednesday night after putting his two daughters to bed. The GFL middleweight walked into the dark alley behind his home in Winnipeg last week, tossed the trash in the bin, then turned around and got stabbed in the chest.
“It was weird,” Ksiazkiewicz told Uncrowned. “It was like bumping into someone at the grocery store. Like when you’re reaching to grab something off the shelf and you turn around and you bump into someone. That was essentially what it was, except there was some pain behind it. It startled me a little bit.”
Ksiazkiewicz (10-2), who was drafted by GFL’s London team earlier this year, didn’t initially realize what had happened. All he knew was that a man in a hooded sweatshirt with a balaclava partially concealing his face had stepped into him with some kind of short blow to the chest. That jolt hurt more than it should have, Ksiazkiewicz thought in the moment, but then his training kicked in.
“I just threw out a couple punches,” he said. A short one-two. Ksiazkiewicz didn’t even really think about it. The next thing he knew his assailant was falling backward, his head smacking off the cold pavement.
“I went to take a step forward and my chest was burning,” Ksiazkiewicz said. “I reached up and touched my chest to see what was going on and my hands were completely soaked and dripping with blood. That’s when I realized that I got stabbed.”
Just try to picture it. You’re a champion on the regional scene and you just caught a break in your MMA career. You’re expecting your first GFL fight this June. It’s the best opportunity you’ve had since a shot on "Dana White’s Contender Series" back in 2020, which resulted in your first professional loss after a decision didn’t go your way.
Now you’re getting a chance to move up in this sport — and what happens? You walk out the back door and get stabbed. Just out of nowhere. You don’t recognize the guy. You don’t have any idea why he’d want to stab you. You knew this neighborhood wasn’t great just like you knew crime had become a concern in Winnipeg, but this? To get stabbed on a Wednesday night? And while taking out the trash?
“It’s just kind of crazy,” Ksiazkiewicz said. “It’s not something you really even think about happening.”
But it did happen. Then he was standing there with a hole in his chest and blood soaking his clothes. His attacker seemed to be down for the count, so Ksiazkiewicz stepped over him and went back inside. He locked the door behind him, called a friend to come stay with his kids, then got in the car and drove himself to the ...
