MALAGA, Spain — After a viral video showed him furiously back-peddling during a vicious encounter with a rat, Buddy the Cat blasted the media for suggesting he lost a fight to the tiny rodent.

“Fake news!” Buddy told reporters on Thursday. “The fake news media hates me and other cats are jealous of me, which is why they’ve released this heavily edited, out-of-context video that purports to show me ‘losing’ a fight to a rat.”

A witness from Malaga, a municipality on Spain’s southern coast, told MSN that he heard a ruckus when he headed outside and witnessed an “epic battle” between a cat and a rat, with the rodent “leaping in the air and kicking like a real ninja.”

Just a few hours after the video went viral, several users on Twitter identified the feline as Buddy, sparking a torrent of memes and jokes at the tabby cat’s expense.

“A hundred bucks says Buddy would’ve attacked the hell out of that rat if it was a snack,” Twitter user @LosGatos212 wrote.

“lol look at Buddy run from that tiny rat,” wrote user @BuddySucks. “So much for his ‘huge muscles’ and his fierce reputation.”

Buddy, who is known for often referring to his “ripped” physique and bragging about defeating a fly in single combat, accused anonymous “haters” of deceptively editing the video to remove “the epic beatdown” he handed to the rat.

“They cut out the part where I dodged his strikes like Neo from the Matrix, then pulled off a Ryu-style spin kick to send the rat flying,” Buddy insisted. “Probably because my muscles looked huge and I looked badass.”

The uploader also deleted a section of the footage in which Buddy breathed fire and fought off a dozen additional rats who came to the aid of their friend, according to Buddy.

Still, viewers weren’t buying it. One meme creator pasted the rat’s head onto the body of Mike Tyson and Buddy’s head onto the body of Tyson’s hapless opponent in a classic clip from the boxer’s prime.

Buddy the Cat responded by challenging his haters to a fight, “so we can go gato e gato like real cats.”

“We’ll see who the real tough cat is,” he told his haters, “when I’m victorious and eating celebratory turkey, and you’re out cold on the mat!”