Cain Velasquez sat down with Shawn Ryan for nearly four hours, and the former UFC heavyweight champion went back to the worst day of his life: the February 2022 chase that ended with him in handcuffs.
Athlon ran a headline off the interview quoting him directly: “I Lost the Will to Live.” That was Velasquez describing the day he pursued the man accused of abusing his son. Those five words carry more weight than anything else in a very long conversation.
The facts of the case, as MMA Fighting laid them out, haven’t changed. Velasquez was arrested after a high-speed chase in California and charged with attempted murder for shooting at Harry Goularte, who allegedly molested Velasquez’s son. He was released from prison this past February and is currently out on parole.
The episode is getting traction for more than the legal saga. A Reddit user who listened to the whole thing on r/MMA urged parents of young kids to hear Ryan Montgomery, who appears in the same podcast, talk about predators and how to protect children. Given why Velasquez went to prison, that pairing on the show lands hard.
The fight stuff
Velasquez also talked shop, and he was blunt about it.
On Islam Makhachev, his old American Kickboxing Academy teammate from the Khabib Nurmagomedov era, he recalled light sparring sessions where the younger fighter kept catching him. “Islam is fcking so skilled in the game, like fcking good everywhere,” Velasquez said, adding that “nobody hits me with stuff” before admitting Makhachev did anyway. Makhachev is now 29-1, the UFC welterweight champion, and hinting that his next fight is one of his last.
Then there was the Cormier story. Velasquez said Daniel Cormier later told him he wouldn’t have wanted to stand across from Brock Lesnar. “He’s a freak of an athlete,” Velasquez said of Lesnar, pointing to the NFL stint, the national wrestling title and the sheer size. Cormier has said before that the Lesnar fight in 2018 fell through because Lesnar went back to WWE, so DC may have a different version of this one. Velasquez, of course, knocked out Lesnar to win the heavyweight title 16 years ago.
He admitted he isn’t glued to the sport anymore. “I’m not like a fan of it like I used to be,” he said, though he talked at length about how polished fighters have become and credited MMA with the growth of high school wrestling and girls’ college wrestling. This is the guy who headlined the UFC’s first Fox card with Junior dos Santos in 2011, back when the sport was, in his words, still going through that door.
Why his name is still in the air
Injuries ended his UFC run with a retirement in 2019, but the heavyweight division keeps measuring people against him. Ciryl Gane’s head coach, Fernand Lopez, recently compared Josh Hokit (10-0) to Velasquez ahead of Gane’s title defense against Hokit at UFC 334 on Nov. 14 at Madison Square Garden.
My take: I’ve sat through plenty of four-hour podcasts where a fighter says nothing for three and a half of them. This wasn’t that. Velasquez answered the hard question about the worst day of his life, then told a story at his best friend’s expense. That’s a guy talking straight, and the Hokit comparison on Nov. 14 will drag his name right back into fight week.
