Former Police Officer Chris Daukaus Comments on Cain Velasquez’s ‘Really Bad’ Situation

On Saturday, Chris Daukaus will walk out to the Octagon for the sixth time. Daukaus (12-4, 4-1 UFC) is on a quest to bounce back from his first Ultimate Fighting Championship, a first-round KO by Derrick Lewis at UFC Fight Night 199. Prior, the Team Balance standout began his UFC stint with four consecutive first-round knockout triumphs, and he is ready to add one more to his record as he locks horns with Curtis Blaydes at UFC on ESPN 33.

In a recent interview with Sherdog, Daukaus discussed the recent controversy that saw former UFC heavyweight titleholder Cain Velasquez charged with shooting at a man who allegedly sexually abused one of Velasquez’s relatives, hitting the driver of the car in which his target was riding. Daukaus has a unique perspective on the situation as not only a father himself, but a former police officer who only stepped down from his position with the Philadelphia police department last year in order to focus on his mixed martial arts career.

“As a father and as a fighter, I’m okay with what [Velasquez] did,” Daukaus said. “Yes, it sucks that he shot the wrong person [but] I understand where he’s coming from, I understand the emotions that he must have felt, and I couldn’t imagine what was going through his head. I couldn’t imagine being in that situation. As a former law enforcement officer, as a former police officer dealing with the circumstances of the case and the facts of the case, I knew he was going to be locked. He is going to be charged, it’s just what he gets charged with during the trial. It’s a really bad situation, I think. We’ll see how it plays out as far as the timeline goes. If he knew about things, if he didn’t know about things, if it was a ‘crime of passion’ with his emotions and if he just reacted, that plays a factor as opposed to him planning a revenge factor against his person, that also plays a factor in it.”

Daukaus commented with a bit of disappointment that Velasquez’s actions denote the faith common people seem to have in the American criminal justice system, which isn’t much at the moment.

“As a father of a young son and a soon-to-be daughter, I can respect what he did. I understand what he did, but as a former law enforcement officer, like I said, he broke the law, and he needs to be locked up. I guess that goes to show the type of faith or lack of faith that an individual has in the criminal justice system here in America, which, as you can tell from not only this story but other stories, it seems to be broken at this point in time. I really wished that it was fixed, but there seems to be something really wrong if the guy who did that to Velasquez is now free to go out in society and back to his normal life after what he’s done, allegedly, to someone or other people.”

Daukaus also discussed leaving his full-time job as a police officer to focus exclusively on his mixed martial arts career, talked about his loss to Lewis, and more.

Timestamps:

00:00) Intro
(00:35) When he decided to leave his job with the Philadelphia police department
(01:20) What he’ll miss the most about his previous job
(02:45) The craziest thing he witnessed as a police officer
(03:50) Having a full-time job because he needed to pay his bills
(05:53) Commenting on the fact that MMA fighters often need to have a full-time job in addition to fighting
(07:53) Discussing Cain Velasquez’s arrest
(10:28) How much time does Velasquez stand to serve if he’s convicted
(12:10) His takeaways from the Lewis fight
(14:08) Whether he expected Tai Tuivasa to defeat Lewis
(15:05) Training for Blaydes
(17:10) His sparring partners for this fight
(18:30) His walkout song
(19:04) Outro

Tudor Leonte started writing about mixed martial arts in 2013 for Italian media outlets. His journey with Sherdog began in 2018 and he now covers One Championship and countless European shows. You can follow him on Twitter @MrTudorLeonte.