Diego
Sanchez recently went on an Instagram rant against his former
coach Joshua Fabia in a form of retaliation after being allegedly
traumatized for years.
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Fabia initially came to the limelight during Sanchez’s bizarre
release from the
Ultimate Fighting Championship in 2021. Fabia asked the UFC for
every medical report of Sanchez’s career, raising concerns about
the fighter’s health. When the UFC asked for an assurance about
Sanchez’s sound health, the fighter told the promotion through a
lawyer that he couldn’t vouch for his health, as he was no health
professional and hadn’t recently undergone neurological evaluation.
A booking with Donald
Cerrone fell through following this, and Sanchez was abruptly
released from the promotion.
Sanchez soon
parted ways with Fabia, who then accused the fighter of taking
advantage of him, being an addict and having sexual abuse issues.
While Sanchez initially didn’t respond to Fabia, he has now accused
the awareness coach of being a “psychopath” who has been
traumatizing him since they parted ways.
“For the past two years, I have been running from a very traumatic
experience,” Sanchez said in a video on Instagram. “You know, words
cannot even explain how traumatizing this was. It involves a very
evil man that manipulated, blackmailed, extorted me and eventually
put an end to my UFC career. I’ve been dealing with this psychopath
for, s—t, it’s been three years, four years. I paid him out. I paid
him money to get out of my life, because the situation had become
so volatile, and so evil and dark, that there was no other option.
Either he was going to kill me, or I was going to have to kill
him.”
In one of their old training videos, Joshua could be seen chasing
fighters around the gym with a knife and in another, punching an
upside-down Sanchez repeatedly on the head. Sanchez claims to have
chosen to pay out Fabia over violence against an alleged
“ex-trained killer, an ex-hitman, an ex-contract worker for the
cartels.” Sanchez also accused Fabia of summoning very powerful
demons through witchcraft.
“I chose to take the good path and I said ‘I don’t care about
money, money will come,” Sanchez said. “God will provide through
his riches and glory everything I that I need in my life. But if I
kill this guy, I’m gonna have to go to prison and I’m gonna miss
the last seven years of my daughter’s childhood. Because everybody
wants to tell me, ‘Why didn’t you just snap his neck, why didn’t
you just crush this guy. If I was you I would have just snapped
him.’ Yeah, I would have loved to do that, but I’m dealing with a
very unstable, mentally unstable, sociopathic psychopath, that is,
basically, the best way I could put it, you’re dealing with a
Charlie Manson-type of mind, where he’s so far gone that it makes
him unstable and dangerous. And the manipulation that was put on to
me was also that he’s an ex-trained killer, an ex-hitman, an
ex-contract worker for the cartels, and just so much darkness on
this guy that it put me in a state of fear that I was worried for
the safety of not only my life, but also my daughter, my mother,
and even my daughter’s mother, too.
“This guy was completely psycho. And he was participating in
witchcraft and lot of people out there would like to say that,
‘That’s some mumbo jumbo.’ But witchcraft is real, it’s in the
Bible. And it’s very real in the world that we live in. And this
man was incarnating some very powerful demons to do the work that
he was doing. To bring me against my lord and my savior Jesus
Christ. In a very vulnerable moment in my life this man stepped in
and he basically destroyed me and ruined me. And it wasn’t until
the end of that I submitted back to the lord and savior Jesus
Christ and within days he was kicked out of my life. It cost me
hundreds and thousands of dollars but I was able to move on.”
Having undergone years of alleged trauma, Sanchez decided to
finally address the issue publicly in order to move on for
good.
“So now the time has come, today is the day and I’m standing in my
faith in God. My faith in God, he’s my rock. That’s why I’m here at
the mountain because he’s my rock, he’s my shield, he’s my buckler,
he’s armed me for this battle,” Sanchez said. “Now I’m in the right
state of sound mind where I’m ready to move forward and let this
past of my past go and be the past. To move forward. But for me to
do that I have to fight this fight, I have to stop running from
this guy, I have to go forward not back, I have to stand up against
this evil bully.”
Following his UFC departure, Sanchez dropped a decision against
Kevin Lee at
Eagle FC in March 2022 and another against Austin Trout in
Bareknuckle FC in February 2023. While “The Nightmare” plans on
returning to the cage, he must first deal with his current issues
so that he can return to a training regimen.
“I’d love to do another fight, whether MMA, bareknuckle MMA,” he
said. “I fought a couple of fights, I fought Kevin Lee, I
fought the current BKFC champion… Austin Trout was my last fight.
It’s been a year. This is the fight [against Joshua] right now. In
order for me to get back to training and live a normal training
life and get sleep at night, I’ve got to get through this
bout.”