{"id":327964,"date":"2026-07-03T02:07:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T02:07:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/327964\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T02:07:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T02:07:13","slug":"fitness-influencer-pleads-guilty-in-miami-dade-gym-beating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/327964\/","title":{"rendered":"Fitness influencer pleads guilty in Miami-Dade gym beating"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text text--small text--normal text--primary\">Published:\u00a0July 2, 2026 at 12:43 PM<\/p>\n<p class=\"text text--small text--normal text--primary\">Updated:\u00a0July 2, 2026 at 4:25 PM<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla.  \u2014 Social media fitness influencer Wes Watson pleaded guilty Thursday to aggravated battery in connection with a violent confrontation at a Miami-Dade County gym last December.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.local10.com\/espanol\/2026\/07\/02\/influencer-de-fitness-se-declara-culpable-por-golpiza-en-gimnasio-de-miami-dade\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.local10.com\/espanol\/2026\/07\/02\/influencer-de-fitness-se-declara-culpable-por-golpiza-en-gimnasio-de-miami-dade\/\">Leer en espa\u00f1ol<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Watson, 42, appeared in Miami-Dade court as part of a plea agreement stemming from the incident at Elevation Fitness.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">According to arrest documents, Watson told responding officers he was working out when the victim approached him and said he wanted to fight. Investigators say surveillance video captured Watson beating the victim with his weightlifting belt during the altercation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors offered Watson a sentence of 21 months in prison, including time already served, followed by seven years of probation and mental health treatment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">During Thursday\u2019s hearing, Watson\u2019s attorney argued the circumstances leading up to the fight were unusual.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cThere\u2019s been a lot that\u2019s been argued in this case about stand your ground,\u201d defense attorney Eric Clemmon said. \u201cWhat\u2019s unique is you have an alleged victim that sought somebody out because of his presence online. This guy bought a plane ticket, came through New Jersey, showed up at the gym for the sole purpose of confronting Mr. Watson. That turned into something else.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Watson is a convicted felon and is also facing multiple unrelated criminal charges in Broward County, including charges of felony battery, aggravated assault, witness tampering and allegations related to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.local10.com\/news\/local\/2026\/03\/23\/video-shows-domestic-violence-arrest-of-fitness-influencer-wes-watson\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.local10.com\/news\/local\/2026\/03\/23\/video-shows-domestic-violence-arrest-of-fitness-influencer-wes-watson\/\">domestic violence involving his girlfriend.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Watson is scheduled to return to court on July 27 for sentencing in the Miami-Dade case.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83c\udfe0 News From Your Neighborhood<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-article-body__copyright\">Copyright 2026 by WPLG Local10.com &#8211; All rights reserved.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" alt=\"Saira Anwer\" class=\"c-image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/https:\/\/author-service-images-sandbox-us-east-1.publishing.aws.arc.pub\/wplginc\/c1f7fa2d-907b-4fe7-80.jpeg\"  width=\"100\" height=\"100\"\/>Saira Anwer<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-author-bio__author-description\">Saira Anwer joined the Local 10 News team in July 2018. Saira is two-time Emmy-nominated reporter and comes to South Florida from Madison, Wisconsin, where she was working as a reporter and anchor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published:\u00a0July 2, 2026 at 12:43 PM Updated:\u00a0July 2, 2026 at 4:25 PM MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 Social media&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327965,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124],"class_list":["post-327964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}