American Top Team and Combat Night have denied any affiliation to package bomb suspect Cesar Sayoc.
Sayoc is a suspect in a case that has seen top political leaders in the democratic party receive bomb packages. Sayoc’s van was found covered in many pro-Donald Trump and anti-democratic stickers. What stuck out to mixed martial arts fans were the stickers of American Top Team and Combat Night. Sayoc was arrested by the FBI earlier this morning (Oct. 26), Trump announced.
MMAFighting.com received the following statement from Combat Night:
“Combat Night is not in any way affiliated with the individual arrested today in connection with this week’s terrorist acts. Combat Night absolutely disavows any political violence or threats of violence. We are an apolitical organization that supports MMA athletes and our local communities. We are relieved and pleased to hear that our remarkable law enforcement agencies were able to quickly apprehend the suspect without further incident.
We have held over 100 events across the state of Florida so we have a ton of fans. It is unfortunate that one of our fans is affiliated with this but they are in no way associated with Combat Night and he has never fought or worked for us.”
ESPN’s Ariel Helwani reached out to American Top Team founder and owner Dan Lambert. He had the following to say:
The van that reportedly belongs to the recent package bomber has an American Top Team logo on it. ATT founder and owner Dan Lambert tells me he has no idea who the suspect is. “Nobody knows him,” Lambert said. “I called around. Not in the membership database either.” pic.twitter.com/19ZGvygcTX
— Ariel Helwani (@arielhelwani) October 26, 2018
“Nobody knows him. I called around. Not in the membership database either.”
There have been no reports of any of the targets of the bomb packages being harmed. Sayoc faces five federal charges and FBI director Chris Wray told the media that the bombs sent are not hoax devices.
