It happened last Saturday, Sept. 27, in Wilton Manors, just north of Fort Lauderdale.
"I'm prepared. It's not my first time; I don't feel pain," said Henny, the mixed martial artist who subdued the intruder.
Henny said his nephew woke him frantically that morning, warning that a man was inside their living room.
"I don't have guns; I wasn't looking for a knife - just God and my hands, that's it," he said.
The accused intruder, identified as Austin Carasani, appeared before a judge just hours later with visible injuries. Carasani's face was black and blue from the encounter.
Carasani told Wilton Manors police he had been drinking at a local club and "was attempting to go to his friend Paul's house who resides in the area."
Henny's sister, Patrizia Rojas, and her husband were in Miami when they got a panicked call from their teenage son about the break-in.
"He was screaming, 'Mom, call police, someone has broken into the house,'" Rojas recalled.
Neighbor Andreas Gomez described what he saw: "The guy was freezing and they started punching him in the face."
As of Tuesday, Carasani remained in Broward jail on a $20,000 bond. No one answered at his Deerfield Beach address.
Henny said he has no regrets about how he handled the situation.
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