Diego Sanchez is facing new legal trouble in his home state. New Mexico authorities took Sanchez into custody on allegations of impaired driving, a charge that could also place him in violation of the probation terms handed down earlier this year.
That probation stems from a case that has already followed Sanchez through much of 2025. He pleaded guilty to a felony charge tied to an incident that took place in Albuquerque in July of last year. Prosecutors said Sanchez discharged a weapon from inside a Jeep while passing the scene of a motor vehicle accident. State attorneys pushed for a two-year prison sentence, but a judge instead opted for five years of supervised probation, giving Sanchez a chance to remain out of custody so long as he met the conditions set by the court.
Speaking to ESPN about the incident that led to that plea, Sanchez did not try to dodge accountability.
“People do make mistakes… I made a bad mistake,” he said.
Depending on how the court views the new allegations, he could face consequences beyond what the original sentence called for.
Sanchez’s representative, Ricky Kottenstette, has pointed back to the MMA star’s history of working through personal setbacks as context for where things stand now, framing the current chapter as part of a longer struggle rather than an isolated incident.
For longtime fans, the name Diego Sanchez carries weight far beyond a single arrest report. He won the inaugural season of TUF, a victory that launched him into the UFC spotlight in 2004 and helped turn the show into appointment viewing for a growing fan base. He competed his way to a welterweight title opportunity in 2009 at 170 lbs (77 kg), cementing his place among the era’s most recognizable competitors. The UFC released him in 2020, and Sanchez continued competing under other banners in the years that followed, refusing to walk away from combat sports even as his career entered its later stages.
What makes this moment land differently is something Sanchez himself put into words months ago, in a live video he posted to address what he called the collapse of his UFC career. He described years spent avoiding a period of his life he said had left him shaken to the core.
“I just wanted to go live today because I’m going through some stuff and everybody knows how my UFC career came to a halting crash in the end,” he said. “And for the past two years, I have been running from a very traumatic experience that 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.”
Sanchez is refrencing his then ‘guru’ Joshua Fabia, and detailed a relationship that had turned controlling and, in his telling, dangerous enough that he felt cornered.
“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”
He pushed back on fans who told him he should have handled the situation with his hands.
“Yeah, man, 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.”
Sanchez went further, alleging the man had been a hitman.
“This guy was completely cycle, and he was participating in witchcraft,” he said. “This man was incarnating some very powerful demons to do the work that he was doing to bring me against my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in a very vulnerable moment in my life.”
He credited a return to his faith with ending the arrangement, though not without cost.
“It wasn’t until the end that I submitted back to the Lord and say, Jesus Christ, and within days he was kicked out of my life,” he said. “It cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars, but I was able to move on. Now I have moved on. But I never dealt with it. I just ran from it.”
The toll, Sanchez said, showed up in sleepless nights and a persistent sense of being watched.
“I have lost sleep over this. I have gone countless nights with no rest, sleeping in the mornings to feel safe “
Sanchez described the arrangement turning exploitative once his finances didn’t match what the man expected.
“This is real Charlie Manson level craziness. Out of the love for my daughter and my mother and my family, I was put into these situations and forced to comply with everything that he said and did.”
By the time he recorded the video, Sanchez framed it as the start of confronting what he’d spent years avoiding.
“Now I am in the right state of sound mind where I am ready to move forward and let this past of my past go and be the past to move forward. ”
” I have to stop running from this guy.”
He described the man as someone who had built a following around a philosophy of radical self-reliance, one Sanchez said stood in direct opposition to his own beliefs.
“He believes he’s a prophet. He believes that he developed and cultivated a school of self-awareness to where he could tell people basically that they could be their own God, that you don’t need God, and this is the darkest form of evil,” he said. “I have to stand up for this now because if I don’t stand up against this guy, I am going to put other people in a place where this guy could come into their life where this guy could manipulate them, blackmail them, extort them as he did me.”
Sanchez said a restraining order had already been secured by the time of the video and asked his followers for support as he pursued further legal recourse.
“Lift me up in prayer because this guy still is out there. A restraining order against him has gone through. I’m working on this and getting some justice for everything that has happened.”
He closed the video on a note of reassurance to fans who had followed his career since his championship runs.
Sanchez has had a long history of falling for unsavory characters which many attribute to the repetitive brain trauma. Sanchez and BJ Penn are two names that stand out as the recepients of most head strikes in the UFC database (or did at one time when that data was public).
Court proceedings tied to the new arrest are expected to determine how the alleged probation violation affects the terms Sanchez was given earlier this year. Until then, the MMA star who once stood across the cage from some of the sport’s biggest names finds himself back in a courtroom, working through a chapter of his life that, by his own account, he spent years trying to outrun.
