Original The Ultimate Fighter middleweight tournament winner Diego Sanchez has been arrested, again.
In July 2025, Sanchez was arrested in New Mexico on gun charges after firing a gun from a moving vehicle. In May, he received five years of probation
over the incident … probation he violated when he was arrested in Socorro, New Mexico on Monday afternoon (Sept. 7, 2026) for aggravated driving under the influence.Other than the aggravated DUI and probation violation charges, there’s no further information
on Sanchez’s arrest at this time.
Diego Sanchez was one of the UFC’s biggest stars during the promotion’s turnaround from financial destitution to MMA mega-power. As UFC CEO Dana White has told the story many times, the promotion was over $40 million in the red when they paid Spike TV to air The Ultimate Fighter, which became a massive success. Diego Sanchez was one of Season 1’s champions and went on to have an extensive career in the UFC from 2005 to 2020.
Diego was always a bit of an odd duck, but no one could anticipate the way his UFC career would end. After years of being trained at Jackson Wink in Albuquerque, Sanchez allowed an unknown life coach named Joshua Fabia to become his manager and trainer. Video of Fabia chasing his students with a knife and punching a suspended Sanchez in the head repeatedly led many to question Fabia’s methods.
Sanchez would end up being released by the UFC after Fabia requested all of Diego Sanchez’s medical records from the promotion, which Sanchez later admitted was a prelude to an attempted lawsuit to sue to UFC for allowing him to fight after he was showing symptoms of CTE.
A Dark Side of the Cage episode by Vice TV details how Sanchez thought “this guy was gonna kill me or I was gonna have to kill him” in order to escape the toxic relationship. In the end, Sanchez would pay Fabia $100,000 to leave. The same show touched on Sanchez’s issues with drugs and alcohol … issues it seems still persist to this day based on his most recent arrest.
