ICE, the drug cartel and human punching bags - the extraordinary fall of a Mexican world boxing champion
Evidence of Chávez Jr's sadistic side hustle was allegedly picked up by the Fiscalía General de la República (Mexico's attorney general's office) when it tapped the phones of Nestor Ernesto Perez Salas, a Sinaloa linchpin better known as 'El Nini'. Between December 2021 and June 2022, El Nini was heard on intercepts issuing directives about a punishment to be meted out to men who had failed to carry out orders. It involved them being strung up and pounded upon by somebody whose career resume includes victories over the Irish trio of Andy Lee, John Duddy and Oisin Fagan. And who happens to be the son of Mexico's most beloved fighter, the fabled Julio César Chávez.
At a sold-out Honda Center in Anaheim, California on the last Saturday night in June, Chávez Jr, in his more humdrum day job, took on the
self-styled YouTube legend Jake Paul
in a 10-round cruiserweight contest. After the usual surfeit of puerile trash talking in the build-up and a Mariachi band playing in his dressing-room beforehand, he won a single round while losing a one-sided contest that, somehow, cost $59.99 (€51) on DAZN pay-per-view. At 39, more than a decade removed from his prime, the Mexican earned $750,000 for playing the role of game patsy in Paul's sustained attempt to gain some measure of fistic credibility.
Four days later, Chávez Jr was riding an electric scooter near his home in the upscale Los Angeles neighbourhood of Studio City when 25 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents blocked off the street and converged upon him. In footage that has emerged of his arrest, he cuts a bemused figure, standing by a police car in handcuffs with a chain around his waist. Whisked away, he was slated for expedited deportation without even getting the opportunity to alert his wife, Frida Muñoz, an American citizen who is the widow of Édgar Guzmán López, favourite son of the infamous and currently imprisoned Joaquín Guzmán aka 'El Chapo'.
READ MORE
Julio César Chávez Jr at a press conference two days before his fight against Jake Paul in Anaheim, California on June 28th. Photograph:The great Julio César Chávez was coming towards the end of his own epic career of 107 wins, six defeats and two draws when his 17-year-old child and namesake, who had been doing ring walks with him since childhood, made his victorious pro debut in Culiacán in 2003. The kid's progress was carefully managed thereafter, his name considered box-office gold. A path to the middleweight title was eventually carved out for him by his godfather, WBC president José Sulaimán, who controversially yanked the middleweight belt away from incumbent Sergio Martínez in 2011.
He successfully defended the title three times, including a
7th-round stoppage of Lee
, before Martínez wrested back his rightful crown. Aside from a unanimous decision defeat by Canelo Álvarez, Chávez Jr's career then degenerated as he battled drink, abused Adderall and Xanax, struggled to make weight, and failed mandatory dope tests. A devalued currency as a fighter, he went to jail for drunk driving and was arrested in California last year while carrying two AR-15-style ghost rifles (weapons with serial numbers shaved off).
There have also been disturbing livestreams in which he's had public spats with his wife and family, making wild accusations about attempted kidnappings of his children. His own father's later career was also pockmarked by alcoholism and drug addiction before he eventually opened a rehab facility to help others. Fearful his son might die, Chávez the elder once staged an intervention and forced him into his treatment facility against his will. Ironically, many of the patients there are trying to get off Fentanyl, the very pills from which the Sinaloa cartel has made billions and drawn the attention of the US government.
Julio César Chávez Jr in the ring in Las Vegas, Nevada after knocking down Sergio Martínez on September 15th, 2012. Photograph:'Chávez is a Mexican citizen who has an active arrest warrant in Mexico for his involvement in organised crime and trafficking firearms, ammunition and explosives,' said the US Department of Homeland Security in a statement following his detention. 'In August 2023, he entered the country legally with a B2 tourist visa that was valid until February 2024. Chávez is also believed to be an affiliate of the Sinaloa cartel, a designated foreign terrorist organisation.'
The authorities knew all that and had built a case against him before he climbed into the ring last month. Yet, they waited until after the lucrative bout, worth $8 million to Paul, a strident and vocal Trump supporter, before acting on the information. Curious that. In a fraught political climate where a Venezuelan immigrant was deported to El Salvador earlier this year because his Real Madrid tattoo was interpreted as a gang symbol, ICE doesn't and won't offer any explanation for any action they take.
'Why did they let him fight?' asked Chávez senior the other day. 'My son has been paying taxes in the United States for three years, and now in Mexico they're accusing him of money laundering.'
That, and a whole lot more.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Times
a day ago
- Irish Times
At least 28 injured as vehicle drives into crowd in Los Angeles
At least 28 people were injured when a vehicle drove into a crowd on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles in the early hours of Saturday morning, the city's fire department said. At least three people were in a critical condition and six others were seriously injured, the alert said. Videos posted on X showed roads being sealed off and patients being taken away in ambulances. Authorities gave no immediate details on the cause of the incident or the identity of the driver. The location was near a music venue, CNN reported. The incident happened just before 2am local time (10am Irish time), the fire department said. - Reuters (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2025
Irish Times
2 days ago
- Irish Times
Epstein files are a new crisis for Donald Trump, as supporters blowtorch their Maga caps
Early on Thursday morning, the beleaguered attorney general Pam Bondi attempted to escape the fury over the Epstein files controversy by visiting Alcatraz prison. Ostensibly, she was on a mission to further explore President Trump's idea of reopening the barren and isolated island off the coast of San Francisco, which has served as a tourism attraction for decades, as a serviceable prison. But the timing of the trip looked like a none-too-subtle bid to shift the spotlight and the collective attention span from the question that has been gnawing at the conscience of Trump's core Make America Great Again support base for the past week. Why won't they release the files? California's governor Gavin Newsom , one of the most openly combative 2028 Democratic election possibilities, quickly fired out a caustic post about the visit. 'Pam Bondi will reopen Alcatraz the same day that Trump lets her release the Epstein files. So ... never.' At lunchtime on Thursday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that president Trump will make a visit to Turnberry, his golf course in Scotland, all the better to blow the cobwebs away and cement the budding US-UK trade agreement through a sit down with Keir Starmer. READ MORE In the same briefing, it was revealed that President Trump had undergone testing for swelling in his lower legs. A recently published photograph of his visibly swollen ankles had provoked a predictable fever of online speculation. Yes, he had vascular swelling. No, it did not impact his ability to travel or to work. The series of events was the latest attempt by the White House to quell or detract from the internal revolt in a week that saw Trump lose his grip on both the credulity and loyalty of a significant percentage of his most fervent support base. Throughout last year's riotous election, Trump thrived on instinct rather than long-term strategy, slaloming through the legal travails of last spring before seeing off Joe Biden, emerging unscathed from an assassination attempt and ultimately defeating Kamala Harris in the November election. He may have been generally aware that many of his key administration picks – including his vice-president JD Vance, his FBI director Kash Patel, the assistant director Dan Bongino – had, along with an assortment of prominent Maga voices, repeatedly and vociferously called for the release of the Epstein files during the Biden presidency. At that time, it was good sport to stoke the conspiracy theory that, within the investigation documents on Epstein, the wealthy financier with a murky past who took his own life in prison in 2019 while awaiting a sex trafficking trial, was proof of the Q-Anon whispers of a deep state paedophile ring and a bombshell client list of showbiz and political elites. Nobody close to Trump stopped to consider the consequences of his administration declining to make the files public, as promised. Last weekend, the subject dominated the Turning Point young conservative conference in Tampa. The consternation prompted a 400-word Truth Social post from Trump, an exhortation to read from the same hymn sheet. 'We're on one Team, MAGA, and I don't like what's happening. We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and 'selfish people' are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein. For years, it's Epstein, over and over again. Why are we giving publicity to Files written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration.' It was a classic Trump play: to audaciously flip an accusation into a counteraccusation, suddenly presenting the documents his support base believe would incriminate the Democratic elites as having been concocted by those same elites. For once, his audience was sceptical. The heavyweight Maga-sphere show hosts – Steve Bannon, Charlie Kirk – were aghast. Several prominent Republicans, including House speaker Mike Johnson, expressed their belief that the files should be released. By Wednesday, Trump was out of patience, firing out an embittered post blaming some Republicans for their gullibility at falling for yet another Democratic scam. 'Let those weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don't even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success because I don't want their support any more.' One of the inarticulable mysteries about Donald Trump's political revolution concerns the question of how a quintessential 1980s new-money New York businessman, with no interest or in-depth travel experience through the US interior, somehow intuited the various vulnerabilities and dissatisfactions of disillusioned and disenfranchised people across those states, found the right words and messaging to reach them and transformed their grievances and wishes into an ultraloyal movement at lightning speed. It was his separating quality and for the past decade, he has been above their reproach. Although much of the blame for keeping the Epstein files under wraps has been focused on Pam Bondi, deep down even the staunchest of Trump loyalists know that if the president wanted the documents released, they would be released. More troubling is the prospect that there is nothing there to release: that Vance and company had been cheerfully toying with their belief system in demanding full disclosure on the Epstein findings. And the least palatable alternative is that there is something within the documents that Trump does not want to enter the public domain. A March NBC poll found that 36 per cent of all registered US voters considered themselves to be Maga supporters – almost a 10 per cent jump in a year. Seventy-one per cent of all Republicans now identify with Maga Republicanism since Trump's re-election. To many among this number, the reversal on the Epstein files represents a breach of covenant. The Republican administration's belief system may be entirely malleable but one of the characteristics of the Maga movement is that its disciples are devout. A collective desperation for someone with a cohesive message was precisely what Trump sensed when he began to harness those disparate energies while promising to restore to their lives whatever those Americans believed themselves to have lost. Labelling the Democrats as responsible for the border crisis, for the scourge of immigration, for inflation, for wokeism and elitism, for abandoning their cities and towns: all made for riveting and effective political theatre. The Epstein files resided as a kind of vague gift that would someday be presented to them. What Trump underestimated was just how wedded his base are to a conspiracy theory that he may well privately consider daft. Now, he has called them 'stupid'. He has let them down. Trump has, over his lifetime, proven himself to be darkly brilliant at turning potential foes into allies – not least with his conversion of one-time Democratic aristocracy Robert F Kennedy Jr into an election prop and Republican cabinet member. But infuriatingly for him, Jeffrey Epstein, a social acquaintance from the 1990s, is six years dead but not quite gone from his life. Disillusioned supporters have posted videos where they are burning and even blow-torching their Make America Great Again caps. The images are symbolic of a new crisis for Trump. On this issue at least, he has shattered the faith of his church. He has lost control of the Epstein narrative. For the first time since he cast his spell, he can feel the eyes and thoughts of his people looking at him with something other than spiritual devotion. 'All over,' as he wrote, 'a guy who never dies'. Elon Musk, another former friend, is gleefully reposting the demands for full transparency. Congressman Thomas Massie, virtually a rogue Republican to Trump at this stage, is leading a crusade to force a House vote to release the records. By Thursday night, Trump had returned to Truth Social promising to sue Rupert Murdoch and his publication the Wall Street Journal for reporting on an apparent birthday note from Trump to Epstein which, Trump stressed, he warned them was fake. Then came the volte-face, the news that Trump had directed Pam Bondi to seek the release of the grand jury testimony relating to Epstein's sex-trafficking case. The president said on Truth Social he had authorised the justice department to seek the public release of the materials, citing 'the ridiculous amount of publicity given to Jeffrey Epstein'. All the while, the old photographs of Epstein and Trump together in happier times are out there, recirculating on the social media streams. There is scarcely an image where Jeffrey Epstein is not smirking.
Irish Times
10-07-2025
- Irish Times
ICE, the drug cartel and human punching bags - the extraordinary fall of a Mexican world boxing champion
The torture methods of the Sinaloa cartel are varied, numerous and specifically tailored to send fear rippling through communities they rule over in Mexico and beyond. Those who fall foul of their criminal regime get corkscrews twisted into their flesh to extract the muscles, hot chilis placed in the open wounds, and are sometimes fed to the leaders' pet tigers. The cruelty is the point. There are instances of waterboarding, electrocution and, in some cases, prisoners hung upside down to be used as live human punching bags by one-time WBC world middleweight champion Julio César Chávez Jr. Evidence of Chávez Jr's sadistic side hustle was allegedly picked up by the Fiscalía General de la República (Mexico's attorney general's office) when it tapped the phones of Nestor Ernesto Perez Salas, a Sinaloa linchpin better known as 'El Nini'. Between December 2021 and June 2022, El Nini was heard on intercepts issuing directives about a punishment to be meted out to men who had failed to carry out orders. It involved them being strung up and pounded upon by somebody whose career resume includes victories over the Irish trio of Andy Lee, John Duddy and Oisin Fagan. And who happens to be the son of Mexico's most beloved fighter, the fabled Julio César Chávez. At a sold-out Honda Center in Anaheim, California on the last Saturday night in June, Chávez Jr, in his more humdrum day job, took on the self-styled YouTube legend Jake Paul in a 10-round cruiserweight contest. After the usual surfeit of puerile trash talking in the build-up and a Mariachi band playing in his dressing-room beforehand, he won a single round while losing a one-sided contest that, somehow, cost $59.99 (€51) on DAZN pay-per-view. At 39, more than a decade removed from his prime, the Mexican earned $750,000 for playing the role of game patsy in Paul's sustained attempt to gain some measure of fistic credibility. Four days later, Chávez Jr was riding an electric scooter near his home in the upscale Los Angeles neighbourhood of Studio City when 25 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents blocked off the street and converged upon him. In footage that has emerged of his arrest, he cuts a bemused figure, standing by a police car in handcuffs with a chain around his waist. Whisked away, he was slated for expedited deportation without even getting the opportunity to alert his wife, Frida Muñoz, an American citizen who is the widow of Édgar Guzmán López, favourite son of the infamous and currently imprisoned Joaquín Guzmán aka 'El Chapo'. READ MORE Julio César Chávez Jr at a press conference two days before his fight against Jake Paul in Anaheim, California on June 28th. Photograph:The great Julio César Chávez was coming towards the end of his own epic career of 107 wins, six defeats and two draws when his 17-year-old child and namesake, who had been doing ring walks with him since childhood, made his victorious pro debut in Culiacán in 2003. The kid's progress was carefully managed thereafter, his name considered box-office gold. A path to the middleweight title was eventually carved out for him by his godfather, WBC president José Sulaimán, who controversially yanked the middleweight belt away from incumbent Sergio Martínez in 2011. He successfully defended the title three times, including a 7th-round stoppage of Lee , before Martínez wrested back his rightful crown. Aside from a unanimous decision defeat by Canelo Álvarez, Chávez Jr's career then degenerated as he battled drink, abused Adderall and Xanax, struggled to make weight, and failed mandatory dope tests. A devalued currency as a fighter, he went to jail for drunk driving and was arrested in California last year while carrying two AR-15-style ghost rifles (weapons with serial numbers shaved off). There have also been disturbing livestreams in which he's had public spats with his wife and family, making wild accusations about attempted kidnappings of his children. His own father's later career was also pockmarked by alcoholism and drug addiction before he eventually opened a rehab facility to help others. Fearful his son might die, Chávez the elder once staged an intervention and forced him into his treatment facility against his will. Ironically, many of the patients there are trying to get off Fentanyl, the very pills from which the Sinaloa cartel has made billions and drawn the attention of the US government. Julio César Chávez Jr in the ring in Las Vegas, Nevada after knocking down Sergio Martínez on September 15th, 2012. Photograph:'Chávez is a Mexican citizen who has an active arrest warrant in Mexico for his involvement in organised crime and trafficking firearms, ammunition and explosives,' said the US Department of Homeland Security in a statement following his detention. 'In August 2023, he entered the country legally with a B2 tourist visa that was valid until February 2024. Chávez is also believed to be an affiliate of the Sinaloa cartel, a designated foreign terrorist organisation.' The authorities knew all that and had built a case against him before he climbed into the ring last month. Yet, they waited until after the lucrative bout, worth $8 million to Paul, a strident and vocal Trump supporter, before acting on the information. Curious that. In a fraught political climate where a Venezuelan immigrant was deported to El Salvador earlier this year because his Real Madrid tattoo was interpreted as a gang symbol, ICE doesn't and won't offer any explanation for any action they take. 'Why did they let him fight?' asked Chávez senior the other day. 'My son has been paying taxes in the United States for three years, and now in Mexico they're accusing him of money laundering.' That, and a whole lot more.
