Daniel Rodriguez spent eight months in a Tijuana prison convinced he might never get out. On Saturday he headlines a UFC card for the first time in his career.
Rodriguez meets Uros Medic in the main event of UFC Belgrade, the promotion’s first event in Serbia, at Belgrade Arena. The 39-year-old welterweight was released in April, and the gap between those two facts is not lost on him.
It’s 100% a blessing to, like, get out of jail and still have this opportunity,” Rodriguez told Dominick Cruz on the Love and War Podcast. “Like, I never had a main event.
How It Started
Rodriguez crossed the border from San Diego to Tijuana to celebrate his win over Kevin Holland, carrying 27 grams of marijuana in his backpack. Police stopped him. Bringing cannabis into Mexico is a federal offense, and the penalties for foreigners are severe.
Speaking on the Joe Rogan Experience, Rodriguez said prosecutors initially pushed for a far longer sentence. “They were trying to give me six years, bro,” he said. “Six years. And we had to do all kinds of stuff for me to get out.”
He also described a judicial system in flux at exactly the wrong moment. Rodriguez said elections had rotated in new judges around the time of his arrest, which slowed everything down.
Inside
The early weeks were the worst. Rodriguez said he was held in a processing cell with roughly 20 other inmates for 10 days and came out covered in bug bites. Once word spread that a UFC fighter was in the building, a guard offered to move him to better accommodations for $7,000.
He ended up sharing a cell with a cartel leader who charged him $3,000 for the arrangement. Rodriguez said the relationship worked in both directions.
“I got the feeling I was his protection. We would go to the yard, and he’d tell me to walk with him,” Rodriguez said. “I really trusted him, and that’s a hard thing to do in jail, but you catch vibes off people real easy.”
Getting Back Into Fighting Shape
Rodriguez trained inside, but he found out quickly that training and being ready are different things.
“Getting released from prison, I thought I was in shape until I started doing some of the stuff you normally do during training,” he said. “It was definitely a process getting my body back to being able to perform at an elite level.”
He arrives on a three-fight winning streak built on a split decision over Alex Morono, a stoppage of Santiago Ponzinibbio and the Holland win, the run that pushed him into the welterweight top 15.
Medic presents a real problem. The Serbian is 13-3 and enters on a three-fight streak in which every win came in the opening round, including a 79-second knockout of Geoff Neal in February. He also gets a home crowd.
None of it seems to be weighing on Rodriguez.
“Just getting here to this point is a victory in its own,” he said. “Being able to come out here and headline a UFC fight, see my face on billboards, and just feeling the respect is unbelievable, man. It’s truly a dream come true. There were times where I’d pray for this, just to be able to still do this.”
