Diego Sanchez Describes 'Traumatic Experience' with Ex-Coach Joshua Fabia

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.

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.”

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