Paul Kelly busted for Heroin trafficking, facing serious jail time

Paul Kelly has just earned himself a unanimous decision, but not the kind most fighters including himself have experienced in the octagon. No instead this one was decided in a court by jurors in a trial that spanned four days.

The Liverpool Echo is reporting that Paul Kelly was convicted of trafficking Heroin and is now facing a “long” prison sentence, although they did not specify the length of time.

Judge Mark Brown told jurors that they’d made the right decision, and that he considered Kelly to be the head man in the organization.

Kelly and his accomplice Christopher St John McGirr were “major” dealers in the area according to prosecutors who successfully swayed the judge in their favour.

Both men were arrested in May 2012 after a series of raids in Liverpool and Sefton, where according to police, marijuana plants, heroin and significant amounts of cash were found.

The British newspaper further reports that when the verdict was announced, Kelly shouted “I’ve got two kids”. Following that his father was removed from the court after an outburst.

Kelly went 5-4 in the UFC between 2008 and 2011, before being released. Since then he’s fought three more times going 2-1 with two finishes. With a crime as serious as this one, it is more than likely that we’ll never see Kelly compete in MMA again, let alone return to the real world as a citizen.

This marks the second drug crime involving MMA related figures, including referee Josh Rosenthal’s fairly recent bust a few months ago.