'Absolutely gutted': Cain Velasquez's prison verdict ignites outrage, condemnation across MMA
The three-year saga of Cain Velasquez ended Monday as the former two-time UFC heavyweight champion was sentenced to five years in prison on a litany of charges, including attempted murder, for his role in a 2022 attempted shooting of the man accused of molesting Velasquez's then 4-year-old son. Velasquez's sentence includes time already served.
The verdict came down Monday at the Santa Clara County Hall of Justice in San Jose by Superior Court Judge Arthur Bocanegra, who reportedly delivered his sentence with "tears in his eyes."
Velasquez's plight has been the subject of intense debate and scrutiny because of the sensitive nature of the case. Velasquez, 42, faced 10 felony charges after engaging in an 11-mile high-speed car chase with Harry Goularte, who is accused of molesting Velasquez's then 4-year-old son on 'multiple occasions." Velasquez fired several shots through his windshield from a .40-caliber handgun during the chase into a car carrying Goularte, Goularte's mother and Goularte's stepfather Paul Bender, resulting in non-life threatening injuries to Bender due to a gunshot wound to his arm.
Goularte currently awaits his own June 2 trial date after pleading not guilty to one charge of lewd acts with a minor, and Velasquez's family has filed a separate civil lawsuit against the Goularte family and their businesses.
Velasquez, a decorated heavyweights who twice captured the UFC heavyweight title before retiring in 2019, expressed remorse for his actions and accepted whatever punishment came his way in a recent interview on the podcast of former teammate Kyle Kingsbury.
Given the prolonged nature of the case and Velasquez's standing within the sport, Monday's prison verdict ignited widespread reaction across MMA, some of which can be seen below.
Heartbroken for Cain and his family. https://t.co/oRYi93yG8A
— Ariel Helwani (@arielhelwani) March 24, 2025
Cain shouldn't serve any jail time. In the heat of the moment, what man wouldn't have a lapse in judgement to protect his family. The focus should be on the man that committed crimes much worse than what Cain did. I'm thankful he only has to serve 5 years instead of 30. https://t.co/FkjHNNzeSN
— Michael Chiesa (@MikeMav22) March 24, 2025
#FREECAIN
— Jorge Masvidal (@GamebredFighter) March 24, 2025
#FREEcainVELASQUEZ pic.twitter.com/nZ8eBdklxh
— Derek Brunson (@DerekBrunson) March 24, 2025
This is awful !! https://t.co/VM420JX8mX
— Chris Weidman (@chrisweidman) March 24, 2025
Monday Mailbag!Cain gets 5 years. Not the 30 years to life they were asking for. Hopefully, Trump gives him the hunter Biden treatment. What do you think? FAIR OR NOT pic.twitter.com/IgOTMzsxvW
— Roy Nelson (@roynelsonmma) March 24, 2025
With time served to shorten the 5 years, this is a small win, no time served would have obviously been better, but this could have ended up so much worse🙌🏼 #Freecainvelasquez ❤️ https://t.co/gMFDSj4yHy
— Joe Joe Giannetti 💀 (@Giannettimma) March 24, 2025
Damn… https://t.co/pjZOJKo7hm
— Alan Jouban (@AlanJouban) March 24, 2025
Well if that's the case, all in all a good result when you consider how fucked the justice system is. Absolutely gutted for Cain and his family. You'll be out in no time champ. You are forever a legend to us and a hero to your family https://t.co/iIpJV1W6OY
— Oban Elliott Official (@obanelliottufc) March 24, 2025
Please say that's 2.5 years on good behaviour? https://t.co/eu9sbBwsAv
— Oban Elliott Official (@obanelliottufc) March 24, 2025
This is why I will never live in California, they tried to give this man 30 years for protecting his family and the person who violated his family is still walking in the streets
— Ali Abdelaziz (@AliAbdelaziz00) March 24, 2025
#FREECAIN
— DT (@darrentill2) March 24, 2025
#FREECAIN
— GILBERT BURNS DURINHO (@GilbertDurinho) March 24, 2025
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Sometimes his dark hair would be gelled into severe spikes, like an '80s rocker. Or he might show up in bold outfits that forced people to take notice of him. 'I remember going to a press conference with him where he was wearing canary yellow capris with a sports blazer,' De Santis said. 'And I was like, I don't know much about fashion, but I don't think that's right. But he made it work.' Savage met him for the first time when picking him up from the airport ahead of an event in Newark, New Jersey. Breen had worked for him for years by this point, but it was the first time they'd ever come face to face. 'I already kind of had an idea that he was a little out there, a little different, and when I picked him up at the airport I was immediately like, 'Holy s***, this guy is a maniac.' I knew it right away. I spent five days working with him, I want to say it was the [Georges] St-Pierre and [Dan] Hardy fight. I introduced him to a bunch of people and he was so charismatic. He would draw everyone to him, and a lot of people were taken aback by him but they also loved him. He dressed like a psycho. He'd go from the death metal look to then looking like he should have been on a beach in the Hamptons. It was nuts.' Advertisement In subsequent years, when the two of them shared living quarters during work trips, Savage got a glimpse of Breen's approach to partying in his off hours. 'Just seeing this guy from morning to night, he probably slept three hours a day, if that,' Savage said. 'He was constantly scrolling through the internet and working. There was never a dull moment. He was always doing something and then the second you were done with work, it was like straight out, let's go, we're going to go hit it hard. That was his nature. There was never an off switch.' Breen could go for hours with an almost frantic fervor and somehow never run out of things to talk about. In those early days of MMA's rapid growth phase, his passion helped fuel a fan base that couldn't get coverage of the sport from any mainstream sports outlets. By this point, Sherdog had been purchased by Crave Online, which operated a conglomeration of sports and lifestyle sites. During one of the many periods of sudden contraction in the online media industry, Savage was let go in August 2016 and later took a job with the PFL (formerly World Series of Fighting). Breen was kept on at Sherdog, but only for a short time. After he too was laid off, according to Savage, Breen's struggles with drugs and alcohol seemed to intensify. Advertisement 'He called me in about 2018, looking for a job, but there was nothing we really had for Jordan,' Savage said. 'I knew he was well into his addiction by that point, and it's hard to really fight to bring someone in when they're like that. It's something I think back on and regret now, like maybe there was a way I could have done more for him, but it was tough at that point.' In the week or so since Breen's death, this is one consistent sentiment among the fellow media members I've spoken to. We all knew Breen was struggling. We knew that the lack of steady employment had contributed to an unraveling in his personal life, and that the unraveling made him more unpredictable and less reliable as a prospective employee. Still, we all wonder if we couldn't have done something. 'I've felt a lot of regret,' De Santis said. 'Could I have helped him? Could I have done more? That's what's hard, because Jordan was my friend more than anything. He was my friend. And I feel like a little bit of a failure there, but at the same time, the kid was a country away. … He was his own biggest enemy. We did a lot of stuff toward the end where, half the time it would be Jordan Breen and the other half he either just wouldn't show up or he would show up in a compromised state. I guess that's the struggle with addiction, you know what I mean? Just can't get out of your own way sometimes.' Bohn probably did more to help him than any other media friend, from loaning him money to letting Breen sleep on his couch. But even that friendship became strained by some of Breen's personal struggles. He'd invite Bohn to hang out at a bar where Breen's girlfriend at the time worked, but between their frequent arguments and Breen's reliance on the alcohol she kept serving him, the relationship seemed increasingly toxic and actively harmful. Advertisement 'There'd be times where I could see he was hurting and I'd invite him to hang out and he'd show up at my house and I could tell he hadn't slept in days and was coming off the back of whatever he was doing,' Bohn said. 'He would come and we'd play some WWE 2K or UFC, and then he would pass out on the coach for 15 hours and I could tell that was one place he maybe had some peace and could actually get some rest. But what do you do beyond that? Do you invite the guy to live with you? Do you do this? There's a lot of things you could try to do, but it just seemed like he was kind of his own worst enemy in that regard.' Savage still wonders to what extent Breen's many gifts were also part of his undoing. The frenetic intensity of the way he thought and spoke and wrote seemed like an expression of the same things that made him especially susceptible to addition. 'He was absolutely brilliant,' Savage said. 'Do you get that without the recklessness that comes along with it? I don't know.' De Santis expressed his sorrow that so many of MMA's current fans never had a chance to get to know Breen, or even learn the extent to which he helped shape coverage of the sport. Advertisement Sherdog's 'Fight Finder' tool was an instrumental building block of MMA record-keeping, and Breen was a vital force behind its exhaustive maintenance and structure, De Santis said. The requirements of such an extensive database of fights and fighters were well-suited to Breen's obsessive mind. Those who can rely on accurate and easily accessible fighter records now probably have no idea the debt they owe to people like Breen, he said. 'He was meticulous about things that people would never even know,' De Santis said. 'It's so weird because today I don't even know what a hardcore fan is. A hardcore might say, 'I've been watching since 2011. I've been watching since 2020. I've been watching since 1997.' Jordan, that's the thing, I can't even pinpoint when his fandom started. I really can't. He just seemed to show up knowing everything about everything.' As longtime MMA journalist Luke Thomas put it on his Substack: 'To the best of my knowledge, the degree to which Breen was respected, admired and viewed as instrumental in the development of MMA fandom for an entire generation of fans is not something Breen himself was aware.' Those who knew him and learned from him, however, have no doubt. They lost not only a friend, but also a walking piece of this sport's memory. 'He wanted to help media members like myself before I had any traction,' Bohn said. 'I'm sure a lot of people, you see them kind of responding, saying the same thing. The way he cared not only about the sport itself, but helping boost all the people who wanted to be involved in it to make it all grow upwards — I think that's something that we should all kind of take in, and say it's a collective effort in that regard. Tearing each other down isn't as helpful toward that goal as building each other up. And I think he really did his best to do that.'
