Cain Velasquez posted a video thanking everyone for his or her support and encouragement following his release from prison.
The previous UFC Heavyweight Champion and AAA wrestler had served an 11 month sentence after pleading no content to varied charges including attempted murder. Velasquez had chased a vehicle, shooting a person inside it, in February 2022. He had not intended to hit the person shot, but reasonably one other named Harry Goularte Jr., someone previously arrested for sexually abusing Velasquez’s four-year-old son in a daycare facility. The person who was shot was Goularte’s father.
“Now it has been a few weeks since my release, I’ve had a while to get back into things, get back into a traditional lifestyle, get used to doing the conventional things,” Velasquez said in his first address since his release. “I just desired to thank everybody for his or her love and support. Your words of inspiration, of encouragement, just continuously lifting me up. Myself and my family.”
Velasquez said he will probably be taking a while before he gets back to doing what he used to, and will probably be spending time together with his family and getting re-integrated. “I didn’t want overwhelm myself with the pace of life I used to be getting used to,” he said.
He finished by over again thanking everyone for the support before saying, “It’s good to be out.”
Velasquez held the UFC Heavyweight title twice and retired with a 14-3 record after a loss to Francis Ngannou in 2019, making the transition to wrestling with WWE. He fought one broadcast match against Brock Lesnar, the person he had beaten in UFC to change into Heavyweight Champion, for the WWE Championship before being cut in 2020. He had been working with AAA until December 2022.