Texas man insisted on saving his Confederate flag as he was rescued from flood by black MMA fighter

In an interview with MMA Junkie, Texas cagefighter Derrick Lewis detailed the devastation in Houston where he says he has been doing all he can to help people to safety, including one man who refused to leave his Confederate flag behind.

Lewis, who goes by the ring name of “The Black Beast,” said he has suffered the ill effects of wading through waist-deep water, but that people need help and he's doing all he can.

“I’ve always been that type of guy that I like to help people more than I like to help myself,” the Houston resident explained. “And so I just seized the opportunity. The police, they kept getting on the news and saying that they’re not going to help no one unless it’s a life-or-death situation. Basically, the firefighters said the same thing. Mostly, we’re trying to get all the families that have kids."

Lewis said he has been responding to Facebook pleas for help, rescuing families using his oversized truck, including one man who needed to save his rebel flag.

“I picked up one guy and his family, his wife – he just kept apologizing to me, because all he really had was his clothes, and he wanted to take his Confederate flag,” Lewis recalled. “He wanted to take that with him, and he just apologized and said, ‘Man, I’ll sit in the back of your truck, man. I don’t want to have my flag inside of your truck like this.’ I said, ‘Man, I’m not worried about that.’"

“He’s saying, ‘You never know if you ever need someone, so …’ – I already knew where he was going with it. I just said, ‘Don’t even worry about it. It’s OK. I don’t care about that.’ His wife kept hitting him and saying, ‘You should have just left it,'” Lewis continued.

Lewis said he wasn't dismayed, adding, "I live in Texas. It ain’t nothing new. I’ve been living in the South all my life, and it ain’t nothing I hadn’t seen before or discussed about. I don’t care about that type of stuff. I just wanted to help him.”

You can listen to a description of the encounter below: