Ex-UFC star Diego Sanchez opens up about his ‘dangerous’ dealings with ‘sociopathic ex-hitman’ Joshua Fabia

Diego Sanchez is finally opening up about the man he says manipulated him and effectively killed his UFC career.

After struggling to find his way into the win column, Sanchez left longtime gym Jackson Wink MMA to begin working with a man named Joshua Fabia. At the time, nobody had any idea who Fabia was or how he managed to hook himself up with Sanchez. Described as “an accomplished athlete, healer, and trainer,” Fabia was best known for running an institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico known as the School of Self-Awareness. There, he supposedly taught everything from self-defense to meditation to… Human rights?

It didn’t take long for fight fans and those close to Sanchez to recognize that Fabia was a clear fraud who had absolutely no idea what he was doing. Sanchez lost two of his last three bouts under the UFC banner before the promotion released him after expressing concerns over his mental health.

Sanchez has since split from Fabia but is just now opening up about his tumultuous relationship with the self-help conman via a video released on his Instagram.

“Everyone knows how my UFC career came to a halting crash in the end,” Sanchez said. “For the past two years, I have been running from a very traumatic experience. 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 have been dealing with this psychopath for 3-4 years and it was so evil and dark that there was no other option. Either he was going to kill me, or I was going to kill him. I chose to take the good path. I said I don’t care about money. Money will come. God will provide through his riches and glory everything that I need in my life, but if I kill this guy, I’m gonna have to go to prison and I’m going to miss the last seven years of my daughter’s childhood.”

Diego Sanchez claims Joshua Fabia worked for the cartel and is involved in witchcraft

“I’m dealing with a very unstable, mentally unstable sociopathic, psychopath,” Sanchez continued. “That’s basically the best way I could put it. You are dealing with a Charlie Manson-like mind where he is so far gone that it makes him unstable and dangerous.” 

“The manipulation that was put on me was also that he is an ex-hitman, an ex-contract worker for a cartel. So much darkness on this guy that it put me in a state of fear I was worried about the safety of not only my life, but also my daughter, my mother, and even my daughter’s mother. This guy was completely psycho. He was participating in witchcraft, and a lot of people want to say that it’s mumbo jumbo, but Witchcraft is real. It’s in the bible and it’s very real in this world that we live in.

“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, this man stepped in and basically destroyed me.”

Diego Sanchez attempted to restart his career, taking a fight under the Eagle FC banner against Kevin Lee in 2022. ‘The Nightmare’ came up short via unanimous decision. He then tried his hand at bare-knuckle boxing, signing a one-off deal with the BKFC and debuting at the promotion’s third-annual KnuckleMania event in February 2023. Again, Sanchez lost the bout, this time via doctor’s stoppage in the fourth round.

He has not competed since.