Oklahoma running back Joe Mixon was interviewed by police three days after he punched a woman at a campus eatery in 2014 and knocked her unconscious, and there were a number of holes in his story.
During the interrogation, Mixon implied to police that he was unaware it was a woman who hit him before he responded by throwing a swing at the victim.
“I was putting my head down and she just took off on me (motions to punch himself in face) after that,” he said. “Even though she pushed me, I didn’t think she was gonna hit me. And even though she hit me like she hit me, I was so shocked because she hit me so hard. It felt really like a dude hit me. “My face just started ringing, and after that it was just like a reaction.”
This was before Mixon had seen the video of the incident. Once he watched the footage, he must have realized the evidence shows that although the woman did make contact with him first, he was clearly looking at her face-to-face and knew it was a female who had shoved and slapped him. You can see the video here.
Mixon also admitted to using a homophobic slur toward a male friend that the victim was with, but he said that was in response to the friend calling him the N-word.
“The gay dude … he called me something,” Mixon told investigators. “He was like (slur). So then I was like, you got me messed up. And then I called him a (slur). And after that, the girl, she dropped her purse, that’s when she came in my face, pushed me, and then my glasses came off, and then, like, I had, like, jumped at her, like, to watch out. And then she came in my face. I put my head down. And she swung on me.”
Mixon was charged with assault and got probation. He was suspended for the 2014 season but has since become a star for the Sooners.
Like the Ray Rice incident, many people were not truly outraged until they saw first-hand how violent the encounter actually was. Whether Mixon was antagonized or not, he knew he was hitting a woman. The video leaves no doubt.
