Allex Rakitin said he was on the N train heading to work at 8:30 a.m. on Monday.
Rakitin told ABC New York affiliate WABC he has had previous encounters with people on the subway but this is the first time something escalated to assault..
"He's being aggressive that apparently I sat too close to him, even though I wasn't in an adjacent seat," he said. "It's just he felt that's his personal space and he was being very aggressive. I told him to just chill out. Like, just chill. It's 8:30 in the morning. Just going to work. Nobody needs this. Just chill out. And he just escalated."
A video from a witness shows the man who has been identified as Timothy Barbee hitting Rakitin across the face, sending his glasses flying.
The video may have stopped at that point, but the confrontation continued.
"I got on top of him and I just grabbed ahold of him." Rakitin said. "And I was thinking, like, 'just don't let go because he's much bigger than me.' I don't know what's on his mind so I was just holding him until the cops came."
Rakitin says the 34-year-old then started calling out for help but he says he didn't let go fearing what Barbee might do next.
Barbee was arrested and charged with assault. Rakitin wasn't seriously hurt.
This incident comes as Mayor Eric Adams lauds the drop in subway crime.
"As you know, 10 straight months we have witnessed a decrease in crime. And even last month, on our subway system, we witnessed over 20% decrease in crime in our subway system," he said.
But for some like Rakitin, those numbers don't reflect what they're seeing on a daily basis.
"Everybody that gets on the subway in the morning knows they're going down into a dangerous place," he said. "That's just the reality we live in."