The woman punched by University of Oklahoma running back Joe Mixon in July 2014 said Mixon used a gay slur against her friend after she rejected his advances.
In a video interview released by Norman, Okla., police on Thursday, Amelia Molitor, 22, said Mixon, 20, got angry at her after she rebuffed his sexual advances. During an altercation, Mixon punched Molitor hard enough to break bones in her face.
"They were like making catcalls at me, commenting on how I looked," Molitor said on the tape, via a transcript from ESPN. "They were talking about Joe, I suppose — I didn't know who he was — like, 'It's my boy's birthday, like, what are you going to do for him?' Suggesting I go home with him, making very specific suggestions about what I could do to pleasure him.
"My first reaction was to laugh."
Molitor, however, said she began to get mad after Mixon directed a gay slur to her friend.
"When I said I would never in a million years go anywhere with you, he goes, 'Oh, so you'd rather go home with that fucking faggot?'" Molitor said. "I got really mad, so I faced Joe and was like, 'Don't fuck with me. Do not mess with my friend. Just stop, go away.' And he was like, 'Oh, you're a bad bitch, what are you going to do about it?'"
Mixon alleges that Molitor used a racial slur against him, which she denied to police.
Oklahoma suspended Mixon for the 2014 season and after two strong years in 2015 and 2016, he is entering the NFL Draft. The video of Mixon hitting Molitor was not made public until December, and a week later Mixon said: "It's never, never OK to retaliate and hit a woman the way I did. I'm here to apologize to everybody that was affected."
For NFL teams, the big question will be whether Mixon’s talent outweighs what he did to Molitor. The video was only released two months ago and the brutality of him punching her will be taken into account. History, though, shows that in the end, unfortunately, talent almost always wins out.