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BEVERLY HILLS, California (Reuters) -- A man who publicly confronted astronaut Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin over whether he actually went to the moon said that the Apollo 11 hero almost sent him into space with a punch to the jaw.

Bart Sibrel, an independent filmmaker from Nashville, Tennessee, said he was trying to conduct an ambush interview with Aldrin outside a hotel in Beverly Hills when the astronaut punched him and ran away.

"I approached him and asked him again to swear on a Bible that he went to the moon, and told him he was a thief for taking money to give an interview for something he didn't do," Sibrel told Reuters on Tuesday.

The incident was videotaped for Sibrel's second film, which claims to prove that the Apollo 11 astronauts faked footage of their July 1969 trip to the moon to fool the Soviet Union into thinking the United States had won the 1960s space race.

Sibrel, 37, said he reported the assault to police and was seeking an assault charge against the 72-year-old astronaut.

A spokesman for Aldrin could not be reached for comment. Beverly Hills police confirmed that they are investigating the Monday incident.

The encounter with Aldrin was Sibrel's third since he said he discovered footage in NASA's archives showing that the Apollo 11 astronauts had placed a transparency of the Earth in front of their space capsule window and videotaped it to simulate a journey to the moon.

Aldrin was the second man to take a walk on the moon, a feat recorded on grainy black-and-white film footage and transmitted around the world on July 20, 1969.

But Sibrel contends in his first film, "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon," that Apollo 11 never left Earth's orbit and that no one has ever walked on the moon. He also produced a Fox TV show last year entitled "Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?"