On Sunday, February 15th, 2026, former UFC heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez walked out of prison a free man.<\/p>\n
Velasquez has been in and out of jail for years over a February 2022 incident<\/a> where he attempted to murder a man he claims molested a family member, engaging in a high speed car chase and firing a gun multiple times. The man he was attempting to hit, Harry Goularte Jr., was not harmed. He did shoot Goularte\u2019s father, though.<\/p>\n That kind of behavior would normally result in a life sentence, but some stubborn lawyering<\/a> from Velasquez\u2019s team and the fear a jury would refuse to convict led the Clara County district attorney\u2019s office to offer Cain a deal: five years in prison and four years of supervised parole, which he accepted.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear how the math finally added up on time served in prison, but Velasquez was given a February parole date<\/a> in December. He announced on Instagram that he\u2019d be released on Sunday,<\/a> and that\u2019s exactly what happened. Video footage showed Cain reuniting with his family outside Soledad Correctional Training Facility where he was being held. A mariachi band was there to play music as he embraced his family.<\/p>\n While Velasquez is freed from jail, there are still complications regarding the 2022 incident that need to be dealt with. Harry Goularte Jr. is set to go to trial soon for one felony charge of lewd acts with a minor. Velasquez\u2019s family have filed a civil suit against Goularte and his family who run the daycare that Velasquez\u2019s family member attended. And Goularte\u2019s family has a civil suit pending against Velasquez as well.<\/p>\n For now, though, Velasquez gets to go home and sleep in his own bed and begin to rebuild his post-UFC life, which had featured a decent amount of pro wrestling including stints with Lucha Libre AAA Worldwide<\/a> and WWE.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Sunday, February 15th, 2026, former UFC heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez walked out of prison a free man.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85,1396],"class_list":["post-483774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}