Someone get this octogenarian badass a white belt please?
Full disclosure: The subject of this article did not use jiu-jitsu to defeat her assailant. She did, however, display the gameness and heart of a gatdamned samurai and smashed a table over a criminal, so if you like stories about underdogs using strength and determination to come out victorious, this one’s for you.
So Willie Murphy, 82-year-old award-winning body builder and overall BMF, was getting ready for bed in her Rochester, New York, home earlier this week when a strange man began pounding on her front door. He called out that he was sick and needed help. Willie dialed an ambulance, but was not about to let a strange dude into her home at 11pm at night, and refused to let him in. Which was when he lost his cool, breaking down her door and entering her home.
Murphy, according to local Rochester news, slipped into the shadows of her darkened home as the young man started moving through it.
Knowing she needed a weapon of some kind, Murphy grabbed the nearest thing to her–a small table. And smashed him with it.
“I picked up the table and I went to work on him,” Willie told WHAM News. “The table broke.”
While the robber was down on the ground, Murphy ran to the bathroom and grabbed a bottle of shampoo. In a move that’s equal parts Home Alone and John Wick, she then stood over the injured invader pouring shampoo into his eyes.
“Guess what? He’s still on the ground. In his face, all of it, the whole thing,” said Willie. Her attacker was still not completely incapacitated, however, so Murphy got a broom and started beating him with it. The robber reportedly grabbed the handle and was trying to fight back, but didn’t make much progress. “He’s pulling the broom. And I’m hitting him with the broom.”
When first responders–remember she had called an ambulance before the invasion began–arrived on the scene, they found Willie Murphy throttling the man, now surrounded by broken table and covered in shampoo, with the broom handle and quickly intervened.
Once police arrived the man was sent to the hospital. Willie, meanwhile, was roundly applauded by everyone, posing for photos with cops on her front porch.
“I had really done a number on that man!” Willie said matter-of-factly.
Murphy attributes her success in the altercation to her background in weight lifting and daily trips to the YMCA to stay in fighting shape. According to reports she can deadlift 225lbs.
“I’m old! And I’m alone! But guess what? I’m tough,” said Willie after the incident.
For the love of god, someone get this woman into the Masters division STAT. Then enjoy this delightful video where she shows off her trophies and how she jumped on the most unfortunate criminal in upstate New York:
