UFC welterweight Daniel “D-Rod” Rodriguez has opened up about what landed him in a Tijuana jail for roughly eight months.
Rumors swirled throughout the latter part of 2025 that Rodriguez, who had dropped off the public radar, was stuck in jail in Mexico. Turns out, the rumors in true in this case. Nearly nine months ago, Rodriguez was caught crossing the border with an ounce of weed. That landed him in a Mexican prison, his case stuck in the country’s laughably slow judicial system.
After announcing his return days ago, Rodriguez appeared on The Ariel Helwani Show on Monday to detail the ordeal he’d been through.
With what he termed “a wad of cash” on hand, Rodriguez tried to bribe his way out of a bad situation, but got nowhere. “I tried to offer some money to get me out right there on the spot, but they weren’t going for it man.”
“It was 27 grams, I had a fresh ounce of weed on me,” the six-year veteran of the UFC revealed. Rodriguez admitted to pulling over before crossing the border last summer and thinkin about throwing the weed away, but convinced himself that nothing would happen. “Sure enough, I should have just stuck with my gut feeling.”
Nor was he the only one in a jam. Heading to Mexico to have a good time, Rodriguez had a female companion with him. “I had someone with me and unfortunately, that person had to do the time with me. So I wasn’t alone in there, but I feel really bad about that.”
When Rodriguez finally got his release, his companion did as well. “She unfortunately- we were able to get out together. At the same time.”
Rodriguez explained that there were ups and downs in the legal process, and several points where he thought he’d be released, but wasn’t. “I got an amazing legal team, and we were able to work some things out and get me out, but there’s a whole much of requirements and stuff behind it that I’ve got to stick to,” he added.
As to what those requirements are, Rodriguez didn’t specify, instead saying that “if you know my background, you know that this is not my first time going to jail. This is just a part of my journey through the whole MMA thing. MMA has really helped me, changed things for me. We’re able to start programs and try to help people, try to get the youth and start programs for them so they can experience what I experienced, which is the discipline and looking forward to something better in life than just a lot of troubled stuff like a lot of gangs. Mexico is way much worse.”
Yair Rodriguez, Brian Ortega, and even the UFC tried to get involved on D-Rod’s behalf. “There’s only so much they could do. The Mexican government, they weren’t having it man.”
Luckily, Rodriguez was able to pull some strings to get exercise equipment brought it, allowing him to train, in limited amounts, while imprisoned. As he put it, he had a few people “in very, very, very high places, especially in there” who looked out for him. “I was probably in the best living situation I could be in, in there, but it was still horrible.”
“Eight, minus nine months for a bag of weed is insane. I never thought twice,” Rodriguez later added.
Daniel Rodriguez sits on a three-fight win streak and is coming off a July victory over Kevin Holland. He’s now back in the gym working on getting back in fight shape. “It’s just conditioning right now,” Rodriguez stated on Monday, saying he plans to spend “as much time as possible” at the UFC PI to get healthy and bounce back.
As for a comeback opponent, it won’t be Kevin Holland, though Holland did slide into his DMs. “I already beat him,” noted Rodriguez, saying he wanted to go as high as possible, and was looking at a match-up with Leon Edwards.
