It is a serious process to become a professional fight promoter. There is a license required and it is a process to get it. A checklist of requirements must be completed. It is crazy that so many promoters act unscrupulously once they have their license considering how hard it is to get one in the first place. There are several upstanding promoters out there but there are some very shady ones as well. Maybe they go through that process with ill intentions. Promoters are, after all, people too. A promoter in Texas, as reported on Sherdog, has found himself in some legal trouble recently. The MMA promoter is among a group facing drug charges in Texas. Dimas De Leon, one of the owners and promoters of South Texas Fighting Championships, was arrested in March setting off a series of events that exposed a vast scheme to steal drugs from smugglers near the Mexican border, sounds safe, right? MMA injuries will have nothing on the injuries these guys will incur when the drug lords find out the plan.
It isn’t a solo plan, the group that is in trouble is pretty large. Fifteen in all, several of them are actually law enforcement officials and have been accused of face charges related to eleven counts of drug possession and conspiracy. According to the report, Homeland Security Investigations since 2013 had been looking into a drug trafficking organization that would prompt law enforcement officials to seize drugs in order to steal them from traffickers. This is a big deal. The people that are supposed to be keeping us safe from drug trafficking are the ones perpetrating it the most! That is insane, but maybe these conspiracy theorists are on to something. We put our trust into these people and they succumb to the greed caused by drugs and money.
It was talked about in the article, hate to quote but here is some info. The report offered further details: “The group was contacted by drug traffickers looking to get loads of cocaine and methamphetamine into northern cities. According to authorities, the group would then dilute the drugs to a minimum in order to have law enforcement seize the diluted load while the group kept the actual drugs. The group would then tell the drug traffickers that their loads had been seized by law enforcement.” Now this is wrong, but clever. That is how they got away with stealing from criminals and not being discovered by the other law enforcement personnel. According to a story published in The Monitor, a daily newspaper headquartered in McAllen, Texas, court documents show that “federal agents arrested De Leon for allegedly recruiting and bribing police officers who helped coordinate fake drug seizers.” The level of sophistication involved is crazy.
Now, we who have done so, know that it takes a lot of time and money to throw shows.
MMA is an honest business for the most part. Martial Arts prides itself in integrity and discipline.
With so many Martial Arts Styles represented, there has to be a lot of surprised people who have ties to this show whether
they are fighters, coaches, or staff. South Texas Fighting Championships has held 38 events to date, but their future is surely in question. They held a recent show on February 5th in McAllen, and I’m sure the people who were in it didn’t know that they were fighting for a serious criminal involved in the Mexican drug trade. I say this was pretty interesting but very unethical. I guess if anyone had done a background check on the promoter, they wouldn’t have found any reason to believe he wasn’t on the up-and-up, but it goes to show, you can never judge a book by its cover.